Pan. Ana wants a pan, wants a pan,
pan. Ana wants a pan, wants a pan,
pan. Ana wants a pan, wants a pan,
pan, pan, pan, pan,
pan, pan, pan, pan.
As the geometric beats peter out,
the Guirria appears amid the rocky hillsides.
A posse of lads on horseback come following single file,
they ask for gifts, letting out cries and rattling off tunes on empty bottles of anís.
The Guirria jumps, wool cascading spume-like from his lips.
In the background, the mountains are blanketed
in snow, reflecting the winter sun,
and the image glistens in the memory
like a photograph burnt by the light.
The Guirria doesn’t miss a trick, he casts his eye over all the girls he wants;
he bashes his stick about and the ashes he throws land in laughter.
When he reaches the house we’re in
he sits down on a stool
and tears off his mask like a scab,
drinks a shot of an unknowable liquor.
He’s sweaty and has the air of a man
you wouldn’t think was single.
That is: he seems
thoughtful and friendly enough.
After a bit of a chat with the
household, his thoughts turn to better times, when it was hard work
reaching those cowardly cheeks,
when the women didn’t want to kiss him
and their cheer soon turned to
terror and those nameless
girls, just like the nymphs of mighty Pan,
would lock themselves inside their houses
so he couldn’t get them, and he would smash down walls
and bridges and roads
and flowers and branches
to have his way with them.
There is not a happiness of structure,
wrote Barthes,
but every structure is habitable.
The Guirria growls. He puts on
his mask and gets up from his stool the way a hill
gets up from a riverbank.
He gives the lady of the house a lacklustre kiss
and the kids a weird wiggle of his limbs.
When his shivering retinue
has massed around him once more,
he turns back towards the village.
Now he’s enshrouded in the thudbeats of the song,
just like the holly and the blackberry bushes
that encroach year after year upon the road.
Pan. Ana wants a pan, wants a pan,
pan. Ana wants a pan, wants a pan,
pan. Ana wants a pan, wants a pan,
pan, pan, pan, pan,
pan, pan, pan, pan.
From Pábilun (unpublished)