(no subject)
Night has come like something crawling up the banister, sticking out its tongue of fire
and I remember the missionaries up to their knees in muck,
retreating across the beautiful blue river, and the machine gun slugs flicking spots of
fountain and Jones drunk on the shore saying, "shit shit these Indians where’d they get the fire power?"
and I went to go see Maria
and she said, "do you think they’ll attack, do you think they’ll come across the river?"
afraid to die? I asked her,
and she said, "who isn’t?"
and I went to the medicine cabinet and poured a tall glassful,
and I said, "we’ve made 22,000 dollars in three months building roads for Jones and you have to die a little to make it that fast…"
Do you think the communists started this? She asked, do you think it’s the communists?
and I said, will you stop being a neurotic bitch,
these small countries rise because they are getting
their pockets filled from both sides…
and she looked at me with that beautiful schoolgirl idiocy
and she walked out, it was getting dark but I let her go,
you’ve got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,
and if you don’t want to keep her you let her go anyhow,
so it’s always a process of letting go, one way or the other
so I sat there and put the drink down and made another and I thought,
whoever thought an engineering course at Ole Miss would bring you where the lamps swing slowly
in the green of some far night?
and Jones came in with his arm around her blue waist
and she had been drinking too, and I walked up and said,
"man and wife?" and that made her angry
for if a woman can’t get you by the nuts and squeeze, she’s done.
and I poured another tall one, and I said, "you two may not realize it, but we’re not going to get out of here alive."
we drank the rest of the night.
you could hear, if you were real still,
the water coming down between the god trees,
and the roads we had built, you could hear animals crossing them
and the Indians, savage fools with some savage cross to bear.
and finally there was the last look in the mirror
as the drunken lovers hugged
and I walked out and lifted a piece of straw from the roof of the hut
then snapped the lighter,
and I watched the flames crawl, like hungry mice
up the thin brown stalks
it was slow but it was real, and then not real, something like an opera,
and then I walked down toward the machine gun sounds,
and the same river, and the moon looked across at me
and in the path I saw a small snake, just a small one,
looked like a rattler, but it couldn’t be a rattler,
and it was scared seeing me, and I grabbed it behind the neck before it could coil
and held it then, its little body curled around my wrist
like a finger of love
and all the trees looked with eyes
and I put my mouth to its mouth,
and love was lightning and remembrance
dead communists, dead fascists, dead democrats, dead gods and back in what was left of the hut
Jones had his dead black arm around her dead blue waist.