It is spring:
The evening’s entertainments are deep within a cave,
the underground walls have been chiselled, then whitewashed;
the solid rock hides in the shadows of great kegs.
this night the dinner jackets of the men are as pale as the walls;
and the women flare and flame in silks and satins like rainbow candles.
Disjointed conversations swirl with the waiters,
a dozen different languages mix champagne and canapes;
hidden music hovers near the ceiling.
No signal is given, but the Gypsies in the corner
know when it is time. The hands clap first
and then the music comes.
Music meant to be heard, to dominate, to command.
Each ear must listen.
Then a vision, a woman, a most beautiful woman,
enters the cave.
She is dressed in black, her black hair pulls back
her face into the black-combed bun above her bare neck.
With one long stride she is standing atop a table,
and no-one notices the dark man in her shadow
until she begins to click her heels and they begin to sing:
the songs of mountains and plains,
the songs of the flamenco, the songs of the growers
and the pickers and the makers and the lovers
of the golden palomino,
the grape which yields up its life for the sherry
resting in the great kegs here in this room,
the golden wealth of the sun and of Spain
and the Spanish people.
The woman dances only a quarter of an hour, no more,
but there is the promise that after dinner
she will sing again.
Already it is almost midnight, at midnight there will be dinner,
and then, at four, just before the dawn begins to paint
the mountain-tops with the colours of the sherry itself,
the most beautiful woman will loose her mantilla once again
and dance.
She has done this every year;
her, or a woman who looks like her,
with the same man or his brother,
who is never seen until the two begin to sing.
No one knows their names; no one has ever known,
but they are always here for the Vendima,
always they have danced
to remind these nobles whose blood is in the wine:
the unknown people, the land.