Autumn
It is to the small satisfactions
we must return, for surely
the great ones fail us.
The unexpected face, the way
evening's slow descent, when
everything is poised for her
arrival, astonishes the day.
And then the steady, familiar
things, houses and trees, suddenly
precise, alive and themselves.
These will do for us now,
now that we have given up on
matters of brooding consequence,
now that such a leisure
of wind, studying the leaves
more closely, lifts them up,
bright in the pure, black air.

John Brehm

posted by Celia Thursday, December 05, 2002

. . .

Los Dos Rancheros (via the Paris Review)
Charlie Smith


I can see the moon like a bullet sunk in the clouds' body
and it seems to me the worst has happened. Nothing
really touches me, she says and begins to express her
contempt.
For a second everything gets transparent. At my café breakfast
I sweat profusely and attempt to comfort
the silverware and consider the water, shimmering
in its glass like precious liquid crystal, to be my friend.
When the government cars go by, the big black-curtained cars
containing dignitaries who will one day beg God to save
them,
I get up from my seat and stand on the steps looking at the sky
trying not to think of how what was between us—whatever
you call this corybantic—turned up dead this morning,
but it's no use. Now everything refers to it,
including the young man in the Los Dos Rancheros Restaurant
dreaming Puebla or Ixatlan back into shape, who
jabs one song after another into the jukebox
hard like a man jabbing his finger into the face
of someone impossible to convince, who halfway to his table
stops to throw his head back and laugh with a sound
like a grease fire smothering. I walk out into the
charmlessly eviscerating street
where everyone is doing the best he can to keep the dark
from climbing over his back. Take your hands off me,
a woman screams and throws herself out of a car.
Even in sleep, the blind newsseller says, my life is confusion.
From here I plot a course that will take me into an area
in which I am respected and praised for leaving her.
You can look me up, she's saying into the phone when
I return,
I am the one who fell in love with the captain and lost
her honor
not to mention her fortune and now I live
this retired life, that is to say this life of routine
and memory in which I am without hope. Says this
and gives me a look. Quietly the strangulations begin again.
What do you think? That nothing can kill the world, not
even love?

posted by Celia Monday, December 02, 2002

. . .