WHEN DEATH COMES, IT WILL HAVE YOUR EYES
(Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi )
I once knew a man
who knew a man
who had seen
F. Scott Fitzgerald
drinking a milkshake
in a drug store
(vanilla or chocolate
he couldn't be sure)
flicking idly
through a magazine
( no he didn't know
which magazine )
in the company of
some blonde.
"I'll never forget
what he said!"
"Let's go to the supermarket
Shelia!" he said.
And that's it?
"That's it!"
His voice caressed
each syllable
as if
he were on stage.
But he was like a man
becoming a manakin
like in that episode of
The Twilight Zone
you know the one?"
In a future that had as yet
to happen.
"I don't know what I had
expected..."
The man who knew the man
who knew the man
who had seen and heard
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
"Maybe a Gatsby or
a Gatsby
who had survived the novel's
tragic ending
and wished
he hadn't!"
Here now
at home
Mr. Fitzgerald
sits in his armchair
eating a chocolate bar
checking out next year's
Princeton
football team.
suddenly like a puppet
yanked on a string
he stands up
hand on mantlepiece
like some bad acting
in a silent movie
before falling
to the floor.
He will never
get up.
Nick and Gatsby come
stand by his dying.
So do Monroe Stahr
and Kathleen Moore
even though
words fail them.
Yet they now
more real than he.
Monroe reads
some last scribbled lines.
"There was a flutter
from the wings of God
and you
lay dead.
Your books
were in your desk I guess
and some unfinished chaos
in your head
was dumped to nothing
by the great janitress of
destinies."
Gatsby
closes his eyes.
*
WHEN DEATH COMES, IT WILL HAVE YOUR EYES(Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi )is of course the wonderful poem by Cesare Pavese.
Monroe and Kathleen are from Scott's last and unfinished novel THE LAST TYCOON.
I also knew a guy who knew a guy who peed beside Richard Brautigan. He was so in awe as to who was at the next ****** that he peed all over the top of his shoes.
Shelia of course being Sheliah Graham who was a powerhouse gossip maven in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Her “Hollywood Today” column was carried in 178 papers, at its peak. By comparison, the columns of her better-remembered rivals, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, were only carried in 100 papers and 68 papers, respectively.
She wrote two books about her life with Fitzgerald, Beloved Infidel (with Gerold Frank) in 1958, and The Garden of Allah in 1969. Beloved Infidel starring Gregory Peck as Scott and Deborah Kerr as Sheilah Graham, was filmed in 1959 at around the time the hotel where much of it was set was being demolished.
WHEN DEATH COMES, IT WILL HAVE YOUR EYES
(Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi )
Death will come with your eyes—
this death that accompanies us
from morning till night, sleepless,
deaf, like an old regret
or a stupid vice. Your eyes
will be a useless word,
a muted cry, a silence.
As you see them each morning
when alone you lean over
the mirror. O cherished hope,
that day we too shall know
that you are life and nothing.
For everyone death has a look.
Death will come with your eyes.
It will be like terminating a vice,
as seen in the mirror
a dead face re-emerging,
like listening to closed lips.
We’ll go down the abyss in silence.
Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi
questa morte che ci accompagna
dal mattino alla sera, insonne,
sorda, come un vecchio rimorso
o un vizio assurdo. I tuoi occhi
saranno una vana parola,
un grido taciuto, un silenzio.
Cosí li vedi ogni mattina
quando su te sola ti pieghi
nello specchio. O cara speranza,
quel giorno sapremo anche noi
che sei la vita e sei il nulla.
Per tutti la morte ha uno sguardo.
Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi.
Sarà come smettere un vizio,
come vedere nello specchio
riemergere un viso morto,
come ascoltare un labbro chiuso.
Scenderemo nel gorgo muti.