El Silencio
Do you hear it?
That’s the sound of Antonio
falling from the bridge.
Silencio.
Antonio lived for the silence.
The expectant silence
of the Maestranza bullring.
Just two years ago,
Antonio silenced the crowd.
The gold embroidery
on his suit of lights
flickered under the sun.
A smoldering thurible,
well-poised
on ochre-colored sand.
Silencio.
I clawed it with my fingernails,
that’s what I did,
when I heard their version of Antonio’s fall.
“Toreros don’t leap off bridges.”
Silencing is when you call it an accident.
Palmas, clapping, rhythmic clapping
to fill the silence.
Antonio was depressed.
Let’s not talk about it.
More silence.
Silence that silences.
El silencio enmudecedor.
The brass band played,
blared into the silence
with a triumphant pasodoble,
as Antonio passed the bull
close to him.
Numbing silence.
When I heard the news,
I remembered those mornings when
I’d rub
dried cobs of corn
together,
watch kernels fling
up
before the chickens,
clamoring around my legs,
plucked
them
in midair.
Antonio fell from the bridge at daybreak.
Fifteen meters above the river.
Kernels collided with the dirt,
the chickens
squabbled,
pushed each other,
pecked at the ground
for more.
“El silencio es música.”
A flamenco guitarist once told me
a guitarist should know
when to stop playing,
let the silence flow.
Strum the disbelief, strum the melancholy
strum the strings of silence, that’s what I did,
when I heard about Antonio’s fall
from el Puente de las Tres Cabezas.
Fifteen meters above the river.
Antonio stared down the bull,
mucus dripping from its nose,
in long, liquid strands.
The Giralda tower, wearing her black veil
held twenty-two centimeters high
by a concave turtle-shell comb,
peered down,
watching the crowd settle into silence
watching the bull lower his head, rush into the red cape,
watching the man’s wrist drag time across the sand,
watching the man’s wrist temper the bull’s charge,
watching the hooves pedal slower and slower,
watching the thurible, standing still, suspend time.
He jumped.
Do you hear that?
He tried to kill himself.
He tried to break the silence.
Reverberations from the pit
of their guitars.
That’s what I heard
when I heard their explanation for how
Antonio fell from the bridge.
Antonio did not fall off the bridge.
Antonio taunted the bull
with a flick of his wrist,
set time in motion.
The public rose to its feet,
the kids in the stands resumed chewing on their sunflower seeds,
the men exhaled smoke from their cigars,
the women resumed fanning themselves.
El silencio.
I claw it
like a pack of chickens
fighting over
kernels of corn
suspended in the void
before they’re swallowed
whole
by the gaping mouth
of their rosewood guitars.
I live to watch
Antonio create the silence,
watch others break it.
I’m left holding two
bare cobs
in the squabbling
silence of a dirt corral.
I no longer have grains
to feed us.
