In the salted corner of the square,
A small glass door opened to watery air;
I glanced down there throughout siesta,
Anxious at the root of a dry tongue
For wine squeezed from the ochre hills
Behind Cambrils, she sold in empty
Water bottles, a Euro for a litre.
I hurried down through the Casa Gallau,
Quickly as my sunburn would allow;
Dove into light as though onto hot sand,
Around cars that sounded like fire fights,
Squinting in the peppered, robust sun
And in - the old woman waiting, “Adeu!”
Then back upstairs, but slower now:
To watch TV in Catalan; to face
A frying pan balcony;
to get drunk and think of rain.

Fall

Crows dropped from the sky
as though they were cinders
falling from the hot breath
of some dark fire;

The wind was pepper and grit
ripped from the coalyard
and the rust of an old truck.

The
remonstrance of dead things
filled the day so much
that I grieved
a little
for the sun's doomed grace;

and hated the way
an arrow sharp and tin-tasting
season
made me think of you.

Caught in the wet gale torn between the hill's teeth like a final breath,
Corduroy cold against sky and skin,
And the ashes of a fire you thought would always
Burn, left now in the damp and no stars
No anything but the vague sense of something
Running after you like a dog you want to leave behind;
But forgetting always the loss
The light fading on stone
The eyes you no longer remember and the voice you no longer hear
Except as an echo of your own
Caught in the coral cave of dreams that come after
Too much drink and worry and work and too many
Years.
Walking through dust wet with frost, cars slicing by,
And this is all there is, this fading.
This fading.

The barmaid in El Capi explained
How to get to the Roman Villa:
Across the tracks, past hotels
like broken teeth
nibbling ***** yellow air;
Along the loose beach to the far side
Of a river’s still but singing mouth, where
A riot of frogs clicked in the reeds
Beneath a trampling green heat.

We dragged down there one Saturday,
Belly’s empty of all but beer.
You wore damp grey denim and were afraid
To be seen beside the señoras;
Your pallor lurked behind blushed hair
Brushed forward across your face,
And you complained because
You could not breathe and I
Was looking at women on the way.

But you would not remember this day
Now if I were to ask, nor any
Day - so why do I?
When we stood and listened to frogs
that, like you, seek heat
To lay upon a cold heart.

We took the weight off below the pine
On the cool wood of a bench curled
around its rough trunk.
Red dust drifted from the road in clouds,
Like spectres from a battlefield,
And the air above had blanched
In a shrill high noon intensity.
Sweat escaped my face
Like weeping-
The rules of the race had changed
And we two could run no more.

All around was the sound of a child
Crying and calling in Catalan
To its copper-eyed mother
as she smoked a cigarette.
We did not speak.
Between a creak in the branches
And the aromas of flowers and feet;
we had nothing left,
Not even the sunlight.

Ball of bone and feather in the dew,
I surprised you when I pushed the door
For first smoke of the day;

The glass air, cracked beneath your wing
As you hopped onto a wet fence to sing.

And I, without the least music,
Breathed poison against
the morning’s blue wall.

These songs
Were loud last when you were fast
In my days like water in its bed:
Molten light, wood smoke banks, promise that
horizons stand, a far off blue-salt heaven.
I do not know if I owe thanks
For the ache of this recall,
rushing in tides
Across the cracked mud and dross of
Channels that have for years been dry
And which the next hot noon will drain.
I do not know, but I shall refrain
From turning.