Sammy the Bull
(Therapy, the Last Fairytale of Childhood)
by Susan Dunn
Date

Europa and the Bull by Stanley
 

There is confusion.
He was 21, and I had to tell him
What others have told me when I will be 90 and they would have been 10,
Or went unspoken when both of us were 50-something:
In the last fairytale of childhood
A humanoid bull did not take the pigtailed Europa on a picnic
And sit her on his lap .
Salvatore Gravano and Cathy Romanov in Brackenridge Park.
What is being mocked here? 
The fact that humans have a courtship or that they do not?
Or that every man wishes he were "Sammy the Bull".
And will live that illusion,
While every woman knows she is Catherine the Great,
And will die the way she did,
Crushed by that same illusion?

There is confusion.
Because the last fairytale of childhood, Europa & the Bull,
Must not be understood or we would never consent to go forward,
It being the story of a very large hole in need of something very large to fill it.

There is confusion.
Because there was never one single moment in time
When human children swung in the trees
And a mother ape stared in amazement at her hairless bipedal tiny-lipped baby,
And because just as there is no Christianity in the Christian world,
There's no bar mitzvah in the Christian world,
So we're never certain when it's time to give it up.

There is confusion.
Because if one can't hope for that, the filling up of the hole,
Of what use is hope?

There is confusion.
Because of all the definitions of love,
The most accurate must be
The creation of someone larger than life who offers to fill
What then becomes an infinitely expanding hole
While there is no lasting moment in time when this will occur,
Nor any guarantee that as the filler shrinks and withdraws,
The gaping hole will contract accordingly.

There is confusion.
Since we will understand the last fairytale of childhood
But there will be no single moment of time when we will accept it
Always hoping against hope
Not that we can go forward or backward and find the thing large enough to fill it,
But that, in the compassionate infinity of time
We will approach the center of this blackhole
That sucks everything into it yet is never satisfied
And in that place where time and motion stand still,
There will be a single moment of peace before it's all over.

Reading notes:
The myth of Europa and the Bull is a very simple one.  Zeus changes himself into a bull, carries Europa off and rapes her.

Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano was a Mafia figure, associated with John Gotti.

Catherine the Great, Catherine Romanov, allegedly died when a bull she was having lowered on to her for the purpose of copulation, fell and crushed her.

Susan Dunn has received a Master's Degree in Psychology
from Trinity College in San Antonio.  She often writes
about San Antonio and Duluth, but her poetry is largely
an inner experience and the territory is as vast and
deep as the collective unconscious.  Travel with her
back to the beginning of time and forward to the end
of time, and another beginning of another time.  Her
poetry is rich with literary and historical illusions
but with friendly footnotes so it can be enjoyed by
those who deserved a good education but  didn't have
the chance yet!  Come along and enjoy the ride.  The
view is tremendous.