I'd like to take you to a dinner in Spain.
I was invited to do a keynote for the American
Association of Spanish--
or the Spanish Association of American Studies,
and true to Spanish style, there was a very wonderful late night
dinner.
And there's some political overtones here
that might speak to some of us.
This is called The Wolves.
A man told me this story at the conference dinner, big round
table, with talk of books, much wine, queso y jamon to start.
We shared an elegant salad meant to be shared,
vegetables built into a turret, we dismantled and placed
on our plates, bits of partridge nestled in the leaves.
Are they wild, I asked?
Not this time of year.
Wild ones leave buckshot in your mouth.
Narrow, pointed red peppers, pimientos stuffed with cod.
The man had grown up during Franco's regime.
His father returning from service in the civil war.
There were no jobs.
He found work cutting wood, Franco's plan
to build waterworks, that even after all the cruelty,
people see was a good deed.
The man, a Spanish scholar of American
lit, then a boy, remembered how the family had moved,
hut to hut in the woods, building a new shelter
as the cutting progressed.
They lived on rabbits, lizards, and frogs.
The meal and the wine went on and on,
fish wrapped in thin straps of--
thin strips of zucchini, fig, ice cream, and currants,
chocolate ganache, Bellota liqueur and joy in conversation.
We'd gathered to talk about animals,
and what kind of animal we humans might be.
Mother tamped down the cook fire,
father slept off the ache of labor.
Love kept us alive, he said.
He had heard as a boy, half asleep on forest
ground, the wolves howl, sing, I think, he said.
And he was not afraid.
Hearing him, seeing the love, the man's name was Jesus.
On his face, I thought again, maybe the animals
who were the first gods in the childhood of humanity
might be the last gods in our desanctified world.