“I was so many Caesars!”
Fernando Pessoa-Álvaro de Campos, Original Sin
Their hands await their revolvers.
The midday sun casts no shadow.
The enemy is only twenty paces away.
The image of the duel repeats itself:
it is the umpteenth meeting between hand
and pressed metal, for the umpteenth
time, with one of the new shapes
that ingenuity allows us to give death.
The dust of the street has covered their boots,
the spectators are waiting for the shot,
the saloon has sold liquor made from
wood mixed with snake-poison.
It’s only three days they’ve ridden together.
Now it’s months since they took a bath.
For three days they have been waiting
for the moment of the explosion that will free
a bullet from its bronze hiding-place.
One of them wears round his neck an Indian charm
(how he happens to have it is another story).
One of them has never shot a man in the back.
One of them has never felt so alive as he is now.
One of them left behind a wife and two children;
it’s two years since he sent them any money.
One of them will die in just a few moments
but I have never felt
half as alive as I feel now.