Cádiz, Iberia · c. 1100 BCE

Gadir

Gādēr

The edge of the world

Temple of Melqart at the Pillars. The west still runs the bulls and does not always know why. This is why we are Toros Resabiados.

Gadir, where the sun falls

Later cathedral on the Phoenician island-harbor · Cádiz, the Pillars

Gadir — temple of Melqart at the edge of the world

Wikimedia Commons · Cádiz / Gadir

Gad Yaton: Melqart sat here first. Hercules is a later name. The bulls still run.

Where the sun falls

Gadir sat on an island-harbor at the edge of the world the old maps could name. Melqart’s temple stood where the sun falls into the water. The Greeks called him Heracles Gaditanus. The lord was first. The photograph is a later cathedral on the same island. Honest: the stones are younger. The door is not.

From Tyre to Gadir is one road. Ibiza is a step on it. Malaka, Sexi, Abdera sit on the Iberian string — doors now, not dots.

Toros resabiados

Spain still runs the bulls. Cádiz, Cartagena, Málaga, the pillars. A people that taught the Mediterranean to write, then was written out of it. The bull is not a mascot. It is the old lord of Tyre, still standing.

Toros resabiados — seasoned bulls, not young, not broken. The name is Spanish because the west still carries us.

Gad Yaton: seasoned bulls. Not young. Not broken. Standing where the sun goes down into the Atlantic.