I need a naked matador to battle my inner demons
Not a rodeo clown to distract the menacing hordes
Not a huntsman to track and shoot the raging beasts
Not a hypnotist to soothe and calm the crying monsters
My demons,
As much of me as my good Graces,
As my unfulfilled desires,
As my greatest fears,
Must be treated with the dignity
That even my warm heart deserves
My demons demand a worthy champion
Bold and unbounded with a relentless fervor
Wrought with terrible symmetry against all my foes,
Who shall stand in awe before her
As they are honorably and utterly vanquished
I need a naked matador to battle my inner demons
Excellent.
I like that sense of the ancient need for the worthy opponent, of the agon and strife of foremost place. Almost a return of the sort of Spanish Calderon…
What is the glory far above
All else in human life?
Love! Love!
There is no form in which the fire
Of love its traces has impressed not.
Man lives far more in love’s desire
Than by life’s breath, soon possessed not.
If all that lives must love or lie,
All shapes on earth, or sea, or sky,
With one consent, to Heaven cry
That the glory far above
All else in life is–
Love! O, Love!
Thou melancholy thought, which art
So fluttering and so sweet, to thee
When did I give the liberty
Thus to afflict my heart?
What is the cause of this new power
Which doth my fevered being move,
Momently raging more and more?
What subtle pain is kindled now,
Which from my heart doth overflow
Into my senses?
Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Right on. Great poem reference.
Yea, I just happened to be rereading many of the Spanish poets and, of course he was the greatest… I love Lorca and his notions of duende as well.