DAYS OF 1994: ALEXANDRIANS

 

                                                                                                  for Edmund White

 

 

 

Lunch: as we close the twentieth century,

death, like a hanger-on or a wannabe

     sits with us at the cluttered bistro

     table, inflecting the conversation.

 

Elderly friends take lovers, rent studios,

plan trips to unpronounceable provinces.

     Fifty makes the ironic wager

     that his biographer will outlive him—

 

as may the erudite eighty-one-year-old

dandy with whom a squabble is simmering.

     His green-eyed architect companion

     died in the spring. He is frank about his

 

grief, as he savors spiced pumpkin soup, and a

sliced rare filet. We’ll see the next decade in

     or not. This one retains its flavor.

     “Her new book…” “…brilliant!” “She slept with…” “Really!”

 

Long arabesques of silver-tipped sentences

drift on the current of our two languages

     into the mist of late September

     mid-afternoon, where the dusk is curling

  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

                                             *

Just thirty-eight: her last chemotherapy

treatment’s the same day classes begin again.

     I went through it a year before she

     started; but hers was both breasts, and lymph nodes.

 

She’s always been a lax vegetarian.

Now she has cut out butter and cheese, and she

     never drank wine or beer. What else is

     there to eliminate? Tea and coffee…

 

(Our avocado salads are copious.)

It’s easier to talk about politics

     than to allow the terror that shares

     both of our bedrooms to find words. It made

 

the introduction; it’s an acquaintance we’ve

in common. Trading medical anecdotes

     helps out when conversation lapses.

     We don’t discuss Mitterrand and cancer.

 

Four months (I say) I’ll see her, see him again.

(I dream my life; I wake to contingencies.)

     Now I walk home along the river,

     into the wind, as the clouds break open.

 

 

© Marilyn Hacker

From ESSAYS ON DEPARTURE

Carcanet Press (UK) 2006