LEAVING CASABLANCA

LEAVING CASABLANCA

                 With thanks to W.C.W. & to Bogey, of course.

                For Neil. The play’s the thing!

1. This is just to say that on leaving

Casablanca with bags and baggage packed—

everything in black and white—I was

a wounded child: an angry rain of bullets

tracking me, words gunning me down

the runway; I was too ashamed to open-

ly bleed beneath the lights. Fearing

the sniper, exile and abandonment,

I sought asylum in the shadowlands

because at Casablanca, I couldn’t see

to speak in a foreign tongue, nor sink

my eyeteeth into equivocal languages.

I mistook the lover for the sniper;

couldn’t see the hostage within.

2.  Now, the woman is ready to bite

the bullet, board the next plane,

soulcage in hand, but needs a visa,

permission to land, for another chance

to round up the usual samskaras,

hoping Bogey’ll recite the right lines.

But she’s never been to the City of Light.

How’ll she play a part she doesn’t know?

A requiem of gray stones in her mouth.

As time goes by, she finds she, too,

doesn’t know the words to the song.

Instead of tickling ivories, they play it solo:

Forgive me. They were so sweet,

so silent, so cold…

3/3/98

in self-imposed exile in Forestville