Qué noche la de aquel año, and: Going Shopping, and: The Wait

Qué noche la de aquel año

For Sigfredo Ariel

Provincial life wasn’t like thatbut more joyful.Provincial life wasn’t like thatbut sadder.The return was not what you hoped.

You said you’d been happy here.I knew it was true.But the province can no longer be trapped.It doesn’t help to narrow your eyesor light one cigarette after another.Nothing works for the province, it finds nothing useful, nothing satisfying.

That was an innocent and pathetic night.A classical poet explained the classical Tchaikovskyunaware that you and I were just like him:

                  you cried into your black shirt                  and I cried into my white blouse,

we cried, as befitted each.

The night was pathetic and noisy.We had the same ministersand read the same books,We were and were not the same.

You had already visited Café Berlinand bid farewell to something they call the eighties.

I still hoped to visit Pompeyand pretended to have forgotten              the eighties,              the nineties,              Berlin,and its café, but hadn’t.

You came back to write about it.You looked happybut from time to time said it’s all so strange.Strange, to you, meant you wanted to say: join those who left for good.

It wasn’t what you expected.I wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed.I didn’t feel pelted with stone against a wallor grotesque like the ballerina covered in makeupwho stumbled on the musician’s foot.

It was the perfect night.I didn’t have to speak.One provincial night and you understood:                  silence                  outmoded dignity                  humid suffocation                  napping at the edge           —because the tortoise will never finish the race—                  my bad habit ofhaving remained herethat fatal illness of staying.

Going Shopping

From Otro retorno al pais natal

The Era is pretty        my grandmother saidand we never knewif she said it in ironyor meant the store’s window displays.

The Era is pretty, she saidand we were furiouswith this time of scarcity.

Buildings rise and fall in memory.In their window displays we saw or didn’t see   silks                    salves                    and scarcities.

The Era was prettywhere my grandmother, daughter of an Andalusian,bought the sheetswe still use at home,          less white now          less soft          on a harder bed          in an older house.

The Era was prettywhere my mother took meto buy a sharp pair of scissorswhen my nails began to growand she thought I was readyto do and undo seams.

The Era was pretty               —against a Havana summer—        vast, seductive.

The Era was pretty.Its windowpanes reflected uswith an ice cream cone of uncertain flavor                    in our hands,melting,looking at an era from the corner of our eye,as we continued on our way.

The Wait

The patient knows what’s on for today.The patients in neighboring beds know too,              family members              even visitors.

He must wait until the nurse leaves.                  He combs his hair.                  He washes his face.                  He pats his gown a little,makes all the possessive pronouns his                  and then, only then, does he look for his chart.

The orderly is at the door.He has moved through the halls, banging his gurney against the walls.Upon it he has imagined a naked bodyand himself entering and emerging from its nakedness.

He has gotten the gurney caught in the elevator doors,has forgotten if he was going up or down,        in or out. He’s checked his orders again and now he is at the door.

The orderly has come in search of this patient.No band or orchestra playsbut he’s still taking him to the dance.

The others feel they are on a tightrope.The orderly will have to drive more carefully     —as if he were on a tightrope, of course.Passenger on board      alive/dead from fright.A patient who pretends he is on the...