IX

The night is long that never finds the day.

—SHAKESPEARE

Ensconced in the Garbo strip

at Bemelmans Bar

the Fat Man finds himself lost somewhere

in the cabaret of a yellow night

cavorting with tipsy elephants and fluted rabbits

in a hold-hands dance

that takes him far from himself

Perched at the bar

the milords in tuxedos

consummate their old-devil-moon affairs

in the guise of silhouettes

changing their lunar clichés

as efficiently

as they do their poisons

In this jaundiced night

that neither quits nor flows

he, too, goes through the balladic motions

with the Lady of the Screen

—the Madonna of Angel Eyes

Glimpsed through Cigarette Smoke—

with the prescribed half-ness of a cicisbeo

La Donna della Fiamma

has refused to send him

her salvo of signs

that pulsate like the Firebird

In the blackout

there will be no hint of her face,

no luminous stars

to look at him with her eyes,

no abrupt lesson in black silk

to unzip the irreversible ennui

Now that he has fallen

under the spell

of an absinthe moon

and the sotto voce

of the Art Deco pianist

determined

to prove conclusively

that Cole Porter was a cannier poet

of modern love than T.S. Eliot,

will this artificial night ever die away?

And after this nocturne of the deadlock,

will he ever dare

to gather in his heart

that beats, beats, beats

from a distance

like a tom-tom?

(And in this poem of the night-watch,

broken by the chain of Lucky Strikes,

will the Fat Man ever dare to speak

in the first-person?

The Hour of the Tiger arrives:

Cherchez le Fat Man dans la nuit,

dans la nuit catastrophique—

avalanche de silence et des paroles)