1.
At 8 P.M. the table
on the marble terrace
was set for one:
cold meat black bread
a marble goblet
brimming with smoke
2.
Everything was marble:
walls and floors
bookshelves and books
even the breakers
veined black and white
shattering against the reefs below
3.
The former president-for-life
lived here under house arrest
with a cook and a sentry
who scoured the beach
for fossils from the dawn
of the Ice Age
when enormous reptiles
washed up beneath a green sun
4.
Mornings he leafed through
his stamp album in the garden —
countless images of himself
heroically depicted
as burning clouds drifted
northward from the capital
where men were once afraid
to speak his name
5.
He met his wife there
rounding a corner in the rain
and forty years later
watched her disappear
around that same corner
her hair dripping
a stray dog at her heels
6.
After he died in his bath
the cook and the sentry
laid him out on his bed
a marble slab with a thin mattress
until the soldiers sent
by his successor buried
him in an unmarked grave
7.
From the cook’s deposition:
At 5 a.m. I served him coffee
at midnight milk…
I was the last person
to whom he could give orders
always in writing
never once in ten years
did he address me by name
or offer a word of thanks
8.
The state media devoted a week
to cataloging his crimes
from the petty to the unspeakable
after which he was never
mentioned again
9.
Before demolishing the house
the workmen blew open
his safe but found
no cash or jewels
just a broken watch
a bent key
and a cyanide pill
blue as the sky
wrapped in blue silk