So it gets to you, too, Almodovar
the pain in the locked spine and sadness,
as you bend on the forestage listening,
to your rounds of standing applause.
You forget Death is the final director.
You feign gratitude, the more your pain grows
in the ache of shoulders and arms,
as the audience values in minutes
the film you have made of yourself
and a girl not yet ready to die
with a friend tired of life who is ready.
Why did you call the girl Ingrid?
Was it Ingmar's Autumn Sonata,
two Bergmans looking over the brink?
But you say that Joyce's The Dead
was the story that prompted your film.
Were you, from La Mancha, jousting
at giants and windmills again?
"Work consumes Death", said Pedro,
remembering God, not forgetting the pain.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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