Visits To Majorca Poem by Alan Dolan

They are building white apartments
At the entrance to the Boca Valley,
Where wrynecks still hang on
In unimaginable plumage subtlety
And scops owls still call like lost hunters
And find holes in the Hotel Illa D`Or
Whose guests remain oblivious
To their crepuscular guerilla sorties
Through the remaining pines.

Men are working in the early mornings
At a Spanish siesta pace,
But as the years and my journeys pass:
Flamingo-gently,
Crane-dancing,
Firecrest-urgently,
The margins are stork-swallowed
And only the sierras remain virgin.

Yet across such a ridge,
A black vulture
Appearing, soared
Suddenly like a memory of The Inquisition
From Cala San Vicente
On our last morning, when our hopes
Of seeing one was frail:
Frail as their hope of survival
In a world despising the remains
And reminders of death
Which you gorge to cleanse the land.

And you bird, ancient:
Guinness-black,
Stout-gently soaring,
Wings: huge as an empty theatre,
Ragged as an alcoholic`s morning.
You must have passed over the marsh at S`Albufera
Which they tried to drain to
Kill the killing malaria
A century ago and for now have failed
Like crafty alchemists,
To turn its golden reeds
Into tourists` base silver.

But The Tucan Marsh almost a memory now
And The S`Albufureta beseiged
By concrete and complexes,
Couriers and clavelitos.