Nobody wants to be your friend, ‘cause you’re not from round here; as if that was something to be proud about.
Don’t you remember me, babe; I remember you quite well. Caused me to leave all of New York town, with a high sheriff on my tail.
(…) Mojando magdalenas, como hacía mi amigo Marcel, en ginebra, con la g pequeña; un desayuno con fuerza. Una forma ideal de evocar el recuerdo para empezar algo nuevo.
Te tragarás la colección de cassettes
De las Shangri-Las, o de las Ronettes
Y bailaré sobre tu tumba
Melbournians Midnight Woolf and a great rendition of the Spanish classic Bailaré Sobre Tu Tumba (I Will Dance On Your Grave), by Siniestro Total.
Who then devised the torment? Love
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The Intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire
Where was it, in the Strand? A display
Of news items, in photographs.
For some reason I noticed it.
A picture of that year’s intake
Of Fulbright Scholars. Just arriving -
Or arrived. Or some of them.
Were you among them? I studied it,
Not too minutely, wondering
Which of them I might meet.
I remember that thought. Not
Your face. No doubt I scanned particularly
The girls. Maybe I noticed you.
Maybe I weighed you up, feeling unlikely.
Noted your long hair, loose waves -
Your Veronica Lake bang. Not what it hid.
It would appear blond. And your grin.
Your exaggerated American
Grin for the cameras, the judges, the strangers, the frighteners.
Then I forgot. Yet I remember
The picture: the Fulbright Scholars.
With their luggage? It seems unlikely.
Could they have come as a team? I was walking
Sore-footed, under hot sun, hot pavements.
Was it then I bough a peach? That’s as I remember.
From a stall near Charing Cross Station.
It was the first fresh peach I had ever tasted.
I could hardly believe how delicious.
At twenty-five I was dumbfounded afresh
By my ignorance of the simplest things.
Los Enemigos
—La Otra Orilla
In the distance, far away
You can see the other shore
I won’t get old without seeing -it-
I see beasts running around there
I know they await me
“Whenever you want”, they seem to say
“Whenever you want” they seem to say
that everything shines in there
that everything fits in there
that I can’t touch the bottom
in this shore
And what if I regret it when I move there
And what if those were all jokes
What if?
“Don’t be so slow”, they seem to say
that today the wind blows just for me
That everything shines in there
That everything fits in there
That I can’t touch the bottom
in this shore
If everything shines in there
If everything fits in there
I can’t touch the bottom
in this shore
I couldn’t touch the bottom
in the other shore
