The taxi knifes through the city’s dark canyons… the sky glowing blue as a gas flame… Xavier presses his thigh into Langston’s… they are discussing the options in nightlife… if this were a Saturday I would have many places to take you… no bullfighters but we have some things almost as delectable… Xavier laughs and says not everyone longs for a brute… yes, Langston answers, a poet’s touch can do the trick… the taxi lets them off right in front of the hotel… in the room Xavier takes Langston’s hat, coat and scarf… he glimpses himself in the mirror… more cold, more fire… pours each a little glassfull… they sip in silence for a while… Langston inspects the room… the neatly folded clothes, small pile of books, the sheaf of poems… Xavier asks Langston if he is keeping him from anyone… no luck in that regard, he responds… they pour through my fingers like water… Ferdinand, A, C… so beautiful, Xavier says to himself, it seems incomprehensible… and you, I imagine you have someone back in Mexico City… or someone new up in New Haven… there is a novio at home, but things are complicated… Always, Langston says, the toll you pay for your art… he sits down at the desk… please don’t read those poems, they aren’t ready… ah, but this one is a gem… “Somnambulant, asleep and awakened all at once / in silence I roam the submerged city.”… That one is titled “Nocturnal Estancias”… Nocturnal ranches and stanzas, how intriguing… I think my whole next book will be a volume of nocturnes… I myself have written so many poems about the night… That is where I truly live… Xavier pours each another drink, takes off his tie and jacket… Tás cansado… Sí, un poco… It is getting late, Langston says… you have an early train and I a long trip back uptown… Please, no hurry, finish your drink… Langston knocks it back… Thank you for a wonderful evening… Thank you, and I will be your Virgil through the city next time… Xavier passes him his hat and coat… they embrace, peck each other’s cheeks… He departs… Xavier slips out of his remaining clothes… packs, sets the alarm clock… he notices Langston’s scarf is still on the chair… he will mail it to the Emersons’ when he reaches New Haven… he finishes off a cigarette, reads one of his poems… not so bad, but not yet as good as he wants it… climbs into bed, douses the light… there is a knock on the door… he listens, ignores it… it persists… he rises… cracks it open… I’m so sorry, Xavier… but I left my scarf here I think… please come in… it’s just over there… Langston enters… he does not light the lamp… he wants to say something… nothing to be said… let hunger and instinct guide them… in this confusion… of bodies, he will show… this one is mine… slides Langston’s coat from his shoulders… the jacket, tie, underpants, shoes… his lips on his lips… their bodies bare… together… his chest on his… armpits and thighs… he guides his hand down there… he kneels and tastes… his hard sex… of salt, silkenness… he guides him to the bed… they caress, and kiss… this mouth is mine… he climbs atop him… dulce, tan dulce… tastes his salt again… takes his sex again… in that blue darkness… spit and sweat… satin funk and musk… sweetens his tongue… opening… he takes him in… dulce, slowly… again… a double death… ay morenito… this mouth is his… sweetly, mi ángel… fills him… the firm grip on his hips… nipples, ankles… fast now, angel… moving together… in sync… this rhythm… of men… alone together… a blues…. fills them… he feels him… deep inside… his soul… ay negrito… moans… this man is his… mi amor… short breaths… as one… together… sweet fire… ay cariño… they come… to this… yes, this… this fire… together… cry sí, este fuego… sí… sí… softly… softly… they lie… beside each other… in the crepuscular dark… holding tight… night pouring in… to stir the blueblack shadows… somewhere out there dawn… on the horizon… somewhere out there dawn… and trains to New Haven, Harlem… the open grave of life, this dying room… its waning song… will you write a poem… about tonight… I already have… and you… I have too… who will you give it to… you, my angel..and you… you, my very own… our secret… I loved my friend… amid this solitude… let us roam the night… together… loving… living… these blues…
ANTHROPOPHAGY
The poet sleeps without the need to dream.
Every day the quickening passage of the years manifests itself around him, in him. The morning light burning its entry through the shutters, too bright to bear except in blinks, winks, the armor of fished-out-of-pocket spectacles. The endless clangor and perfume of the streets outside the windows, once a comfort, now a menace, requiring a miracle to survive another Carnaval. The heat, as if every oven, stove and kiln in Rio were firing, glazing him and all but the hardiest to half their size. The sheet music’s notes, like the newsprint’s accounts of the unfolding and distant world war, the dictator and Depression closer to home, all sliding inexorably away from his fingers and eyes. His knees, back, the ankles that rattle with each hike up a stairwell, each trek across the University of the Federal District’s grounds. The liver’s complaints after another glass of beer or cachaça, another snort of cocaine. All those words that gushed like water from a fountain, that now have to be hunted with an unsteady hand and head. The heart’s berimbau quivering in irregular time, a rhythm only the reaper can and will discern if allowed. Except in those moments when the hours fall away, disappear, he lying on his side, in dreams or awake and a record cycles on the player, Debussy, Villa-Lobos, Pixinguinha, or a disc grooved from the recordings of catimbó from his journeys across the northeast, its sonorities drumming out a bridge between the present and the past; and behind him, beside him the one who — unlike the glittering young men in his circle of friends, the well-bred law students and witty budding writers who claim to celebrate him, the young, poor blond athlete from Porto Alegre he met in the stall on rua Conde de Lage seeking a sinecure, through his, the distinguished writer’s, intervention, at the Ministry of Culture, the beautiful and not so beautiful sycophants who say they have read his Macunaíma and studies and poetry and the ones who have managed to mis-memorize a few lines — like this one, known only by his first name, gained in the passageway between the Budapesto’s dining room and its kitchen, by his braided locks and his careful gait, trained through climbing the hillside shanties ringing the city, by his dark arms embracing, knotting around the writer’s chest, their fingers interlacing, locking as he enters, moves, dances inside him, the beat mutual and infinite in its tenderness and knowingness; or later, the day after, crouching over his desk, having just finished breakfast downstairs once the cup of cafezinho and the bowl of half-eaten papaya, the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice have been cleared, the letters to Anita and Murilo and Henrique and Manuel written, the reviews for his column, and he begins the strophe,