On those who criticised his "Polyphemus"
Galatea's fierce monoculous
devotee through the streets of Madrid trod,
and like crude peasants often tend to use
against a stranger all their howling dogs,
one scholar stiff, another more severe
(a mob of critics, if not pygmies) stormed,
their teeth all sharpened and their venom used
against the cyclops goatherd so deformed.
In spite of his forehead's one shimmering orb,
they blackened him; then he let loose two words —
two bolts from where the sun has never shined:
"If pedants," he responded, "really want
a new light from another hemisphere,
let them file their complaints with my behind."
Translated by Alix Ingber
