1 night has come like something crawling
2 up the bannister, sticking out its tongue
3 of fire, and I remember the
4 missionaries up to their knees in muck
5 retreating across the beautiful blue river
6 and the machine gun slugs flicking spots of
7 fountain and Jones drunk on the shore
8 saying shit shit these Indians
9 where'd they get the fire power?
10 and I went in to see Maria
11 and she said, do you think they'll attack,
12 do you think they'll come across the river?
13 afraid to die? I asked her, and she said
14 who isn't?
15 and I went to the medicine cabinet
16 and poured a tall glassful, and I said
17 we've made 22,000 dollars in 3 months building roads
18 for Jones and you have to die a little
19 to make it that fast ... Do you think the communists
20 started this? she asked, do you think it's the communists?
21 and I said, will you stop being a neurotic bitch.
22 these small countries rise because they are getting
23 their pockets filled from both sides ... and she
24 looked at me with that beautiful schoolgirl idiocy
25 and she walked out, it was getting dark but I let her go,
26 you've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to
27 keep her,
28 and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow,
29 so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other,
30 so I sat there and put the drink down and made another
31 and I thought, whoever thought an engineering course at Old Miss
32 would bring you where the lamps swing slowly
33 in the green of some far night?
34 and Jones came in with his arm around her blue waist
35 and she had been drinking too, and I walked up and said,

36 man and wife? and that made her angry for if a woman can't
37 get you by the nuts and squeeze, she's done,
38 and I poured another tall one, and
39 I said, you 2 may not realize it
40 but we're not going to get out of here alive.

41 we drank the rest of the night.
42 you could hear, if you were real still,
43 the water coming down between the god trees,
44 and the roads we had built
45 you could hear animals crossing them
46 and the Indians, savage fools with some savage cross to bear.
47 and finally there was the last look in the mirror
48 as the drunken lovers hugged
49 and I walked out and lifted a piece of straw
50 from the roof of the hut
51 then snapped the lighter, and I
52 watched the flames crawl, like hungry mice
53 up the thin brown stalks, it was slow but it was
54 real, and then not real, something like an opera,
55 and then I walked down toward the machine gun sounds,
56 the same river, and the moon looked across at me
57 and in the path I saw a small snake, just a small one,
58 looked like a rattler, but it couldn't be a rattler,
59 and it was scared seeing me, and I grabbed it behind the neck
60 before it could coil and I held it then
61 its little body curled around my wrist
62 like a finger of love and all the trees looked with eyes
63 and I put my mouth to its mouth
64 and love was lightning and remembrance,
65 dead communists, dead fascists, dead democrats, dead gods and
66 back in what was left of the hut Jones
67 had his dead black arm around her dead blue waist.

Do livro "The early selected poems, 1946-1966".