59. CAFÉ MACHO II

Your string has fallen,
pharaonic dancing girl,
I see your tan skin
in the flute music;
in the liquor,
the dusky lounge,
the airconditioned dance place
with women to pick from,
pastiche of loves
that might have been
were it not for…
What tender celebration
if you were you
and I were I
but here we are all
the should be,
the would be, and may be…

She walks out to accept this dance,
her eyes are black and fierce,
her beauty is terrible, ringing,
like an army with banners flying.
She deigns to accept this embrace
from the ninety—ninth shadow
of the man she gave her soul.
O essential grace,
the jazz of your dry skin
is beige and angled in motions.
You evoke, essential grace,
music; it was I, once,
who took your soul.
For the space of a dance,
the embrace of a trance,
quite by chance,
we relive my long ago night
and some evening of yours
before you had your hair cut and styled,
when you possessed your youngest beauty.
Your smile is a white feather
floating in my air–conditioned eyeballs.
Your tan and tennis face
is full of invitations,
reasons, address cards.