MATADOR

MATADOR

MATADOR

Stripped to the waist in a hotel room in Arles,
the sword-valet has already unbuttoned
the top three of the matador’s mother-of-pearl
clasps when I, the cameraman, am ushered
in with the drapes half-shut against the molten
pavements, the faint baying of the crowd’s desire
to see once more the blood-spattered ornate vineleaves
woven in gold all the way up his thighs.

Cocksure in his cape he’d strutted beaded and clean
into the ring, prim in a waistcoat, on fire
for the bull as I was for him, my lens trained
on his torso, tasselled to the hilt. His arms’
geometry provoked the horns to a goring.
Then raised on the shoulders, an ear in each hand.