Eduardo Mondlane, and: Lytton's Corners

68 the minnesota review Hunt Hawkins Eduardo Mondlane There was a funeral nearly every month in Dar es Salaam. I remember the white lady with the cottage by the Indian Ocean who asked me to make a scotch and soda. I filled a tumbler half full of each. Her woman friend straightened it out, then we argued whether Albert Schweitzer had done any good. Perhaps I should have resisted when the Americans running the Institute asked me to show their film on democracy. My students said they liked the idea, but the day the World Court ruled on Namibia, declaring South Africa could keep it, they stood around their radios weeping. I wanted to help, but I didn't know how. All night the palm trees rattled and the old hippo coughed down in the bay. The head of the Institute flew out from New York just to tell us we were in the "vortex of History." But Mondlane, who had become the leader of the revolution simply because he was the most educated Mozambican alive, said our relationship was "vitiated." He lectured us like the professor he used to be, his voice booming around the room. The students shouldn't be Westernized. They had to be taught to sacrifice. Eventually the hot season was over. The friendly head master, who we figured was an agent because he had his T-bird shipped in from Laos, went home when his divorced wife died. For half an hour every morning the rain pounded so hard that classes had to stop. We were doing our best. The scotch-and-soda lady hawkins 69 was kind enough to lend her cottage to Mondlane to work in. When he opened the package postmarked "Moscow," the explosion knocked down the mailman who was already a block away. Lytton's Corners Sitting in Lytton's Corners drinking beer after walking in the marsh you tell me you're homosexual. Even though I've known you two years your hints were never enough I had to face it. The pitcher sweats and shines jukebox light. I say, "Elaine called We're going to live together." You nod. What do you want? Your hands and mouth look new. You get edgy. Did silence make you lonely? Did speaking? I face away and remember the calm of the morning. At dawn the egrets leave their nests among eucalyptus trees. The brown bittern sticks his beak in the air and disappears among the reeds. Terns dart about Pescadero bridge. After stabbing fish all morning, the blue heron rise up with great simplicity. ...