I
I hear it is clear today but I don’t want to see it.
How can I keep it away?
At noon the drum of the sun is, yes, already begun,
and the time of an appointment
cannot be stayed, although the imminence of it
is drawing much tighter the tight muscles of my throat,
this summer’s home of my torment.
Punctually at one my friend Paul comes, and we walk through the Medina.
(Is it thatch-roofed?
Stitches of light seem to kindle the crisp curled gold of his hair
and his thin-burned face which is always so concentrated.)
Do I talk to him?
Only a few precisely spaced and forced observations of what I imagine
he must have daily observed and nothing at all of the panic
of which I longed to speak to him.
He says, “Oh, here,” and enters a shop, and while he is bargaining for
purchases I lose myself in a confusion of shoppers, hoping that he will
ascribe my disappearance to this easily-lost-in confusion . . .
I love Paul, but once he said to me: “I’ve never had a neurosis.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Last night, oh, yes, last night the rain crept soundlessly down
as if ashamed of its detested recurrence, obsequiously respectful
of consulate flags, or simply speechless as I am . . .
In Tangier all non-Mohammedan visitors and residents are called Nazarenes
and are polar-ized by white weather that’s reminiscent of sunlight that’s
never truly existed.
The mythically established ones gather in a conspiratorial manner
at elaborate garden dinners and inquire of each other
is he or he or he “safe,”
a question that seems to be filtered endlessly through an echo chamber.
Does it have a dependable answer?
My guess would be no but my presence here has been brief,
and with so much night rain . . .
II
My young companion, “The Poet.”
Fair as Adonis but rational as ten hatters at Alice’s tea-party.
Seems to be succumbing to my iron of silence
which is so desperately unwillful.
Can he still, at times, like me?
Can magic still, at times, be the order of our existence?
He can, at times, offer a comforting dimness to rooms still lighted
and rooms aren’t always lighted.
Apart from the garden dinners,
to which this attractive companion is actually, of course,
the one that’s truly invited
we follow an all but unalterable evening program.
We go to the Zoco Chico for hot mint tea with jiggers
of rum in it.
Will it loosen my tongue? Effectually, not
just enough to say: “Let’s go.”
Why don’t I pretend that a growth on my vocal chords has made it necessary
to have them at once cut away, say,
in Gilbraltar?
I could have this bit of not much too false information
printed in clear block letters on pieces of cardboard
which I could pass out gravely at all social occasions.
Or go on “H.”
Shouldn’t everyone go on “H” before they die, and be certain of their supply?
How pleasant it surely would be
to drift above the tree-tops, invisible, unheard,
unsuspected,
serenely detached from the troublesome matter
of speech,
all panic locked in a closet, yes, elect the cool death.
III
The straits between here and England’s Rock are a damp piece of water
that barely acknowledges any day to be clear.
I’ve often seen them (subjectively) when they were the bedsheets
of someone just dead of convulsions.
And yet last night my talented
young friend and I
leaned on a window sill to catch the slow rain
in a cup —
the purest water . . .
◆ ◆ ◆
Jane, I said to you: “Jane, I can’t talk anymore.”
and you said to me: “Tennessee, you were never much of a talker.”
The long, white beach and the wanderers along it,
we recognized, silently, its emptiness, much populated.
The Nazarene (mythical) with the elegantly aged Rolls-Royce.
Quote:
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in a Silver Cloud.”
No day is finished but discontinued a while.