How can I –

with the boy just there

smooth, glinting like a blade –

continue studying the pronouncements

of some famous poet

on free verse, even though his

theories are rather wonderful

 

and even though, as always

the secret of the sea’s present, a tide

pushing our words out from the dark,

night and day, with that indifferent, luminous

persistence that never surrenders but

quite the opposite, rears up

again and again, as if there were

nothing else to be done

faced with time’s footsteps

 

and if, additionally, he looks at me (once, twice)

nods slightly,

half opens his lips

to whisper something

I don’t understand, but that’ll launch

a bolt, arrow-precise

into my heart

 

and not content with that, comes over

and asks for a light (him, asking me!)

and sits right down at my table

and flashes, flashes

a smile with no precursor

and drawling slightly

as befits both the hour

and a boy of his age (twenty-four)

says point-blank, the little devil

that his name’s Danilo.

 

Danilo – are you all getting this?

how can I countenance

all the fine and noble promises

I’ve made, and definitely won’t keep,

and have deferred night after night

for all these years, if

 

on top of that it’s summer, and the beer’s

rolling like a cyclist on the highway

linking cities and faraway towns

like Brooklyn and Manhattan (did he say he came from Manhattan?)

and I’m feeling like I’m inside a badly-translated

poem but it’s beautiful, as beautiful

 

as his eyes

black, blazing,

that push me, through the streets

 

beneath the same glimmer of the stars

(they’ll never tire of being the same),

looking for a place to spend the night

(well, that’s how he expressed it to me, and that’s

how I’m relaying it back to you all now): bro, he said every four

words, bro – are you all getting this? He’s really something else.

Wake up, I say to myself, there’s no way

this can last.

 

But the poem had suddenly turned into

a really bad film and, naturally,

as these things tend to pan out, a rather pleasurable one.

Hideously pleasurable – I said to myself, I said

to Danilo

 

and I chose to close my eyes

and inhale, deeply, the warm air that now, yes now

his lips offered up to me so tenderly. That was all,

then later falling asleep by his side, naked,

with the sweet agony of someone waiting for dawn

over Manhattan.