One called "The Visitor" Now some explanation of the title.
"The Visitor," when people who've
seen it have talked to me about it, especially students,
have said, well, is that the poetic muse or, uh?
And then, my usual answer was something like, well no,
it's just what it's talking about.
It's about some animal.
But that isn't quite true either.
If I'd have known, at the time, what I was talking about,
I probably would have titled it more
distinctly than "The Visitor."
But what I think I am talking about is Lorca's term.
It really strikes me as very important,
the one he used, "duende."
And it means a goblin.
And he used it as a metaphor for the whole artistic spirit,
the vibrations.
And that's what this poem is on.
"His footstep is light, leaving no path in the yard.
Can be heard if quiet's the mood, heart invites in.
Though he is shy and will vanish at call of his name,
he has come.
I have thought him there while nailing up
fences in the moist sun.
A dark suit and a crowd listening to music,
I have heard him as a story, as a warning
to get off or on to the stage.
He speaks to me often of my shame.
Yet he has come like a slave at night
when the rain is cold, to my bidding, when others
regret the sight of my face.
Sometimes drunk, noisy, climbing my back,
sometimes with grace in his rhythm.
But for a time, he has walked past the yard,
leaving prints illegible in the dust,
beginning abruptly and disappearing as fast.
Wherever he is, he comes for me when the setting sun
puts a light show of shadow on the mountains, when
musicians too tired to care play tales of sound, their own lives
to the pelt-adorned crowd.
This I have spoken of at other hours laughing,
and said it was the abominable snowman who comes.
But he is more foreign than that."