Almassora, 4th October 2016

Fired nostrils fume,
Besotted eyes gloom;
Daring young in the square,
They have forced the dare.
Hoof marks the sand
With a flick and kick and,
Horns readied low,
Will he strike the thunder blow?
Aye! shout, scream and roar,
They have come for more,
So taunt the mad beast
And fly the sanguine fleece.
Flog him, beat him and curse,
His wits are none but worse.
See he drools and heaves,
A dumb thing to deceive.
Damn! No! Quick! Make a run!
He's pick a foe and not for fun;
For fear or wrath, who does know?
But boy, how about the show. 

These were quick words I wrote whilst in a bar in Almassora, Spain. I was walking up the coast of Spain, from Valencia, to meet a friend in the Penesdes. I slept on the beach, in orange groves, under verandas of bars and under a medieval coastal watchtower. It was a some two hundred plus kilometres and took me ten days.

Near the beginning of the voyage, I walked into the old market town of Almassora. To my surprise I found myself within a festive running of the bulls. Entire streets had been thickly fenced off with bars, wide enough to allow a human to pass through. In the main square I found the commotion, there was a black bull, with white and cut horns, who was panting and spluttering, spitting phlegm. Sand and straw had been strewn across the square. Men wracked themselves between the thick bars that made a cage against the bull. It was a moment when the bravery of the local lads could be tested. As the ladies looked on, men dashed out to taunt the beast within, running behind it, slapping it and when the bull charged they fled to the safety of the metal bars – poltroons to me. Other braver men attempted to skirt and outmanoeuvre the bull, and only just spared themselves being gorged.

It was a very intimate experience. There was the smell of hot bodies – sweat that is – and cigarette smoke. People screamed and jeered. I was burdened by my rucksack and couldn’t pass into the cage without leaving my bag unattended, so I just watched from behind. The bull was obviously terrified and mad all the same. It wasn’t to be killed like in the rings, of course. Only after an exhausting couple of hours was the bull released from this torment and everyone went to the bars to drink and talk and quip.

I wrote this simple poem then, alone in a quiet bar, outside with a smoke sitting at a galvanised table, with a cool, cheap beer. I was very alone that night, in fact I was very alone that whole journey up the coast of Spain. That night, I left Almassora and wandered through the orange groves in the crisp, nightly air, a real reprieve from the oppression of the Spanish sun. I chose a spot to lay my bivouac out within an orange grove and went to sleep. Probably earlier than five o’clock in the morning the irrigation system turned on. This didn’t bother me directly, but when I woke up later I found dozens of slugs that had slithered all over me and my bivouac. I spent the first ten minutes of my morning picking those slugs off. I still had many leagues ahead of me.

(The picture above was taken by my dear friend Jacob at his family’s Catalan bodega in the Penesdes, where I stayed for two weeks, after walking there at the end of harvest.)