"Beach Read."
"The morning is warm and hazy, mysterious, as if
translated from Spanish.
Just seeing that from the country of Lorca,
a poem has been brought into English,
one is warmed as one is warmed by the sight of boys
who lie on a beach, a boys-only section,
though a mild, chill breeze crosses
the sand and their isolation, islands unto themselves
and their personal rituals, and nobody talks.
By the look of them, there are many languages represented.
This is a beach known internationally
for the beauty of its boys.
Reading further, the second stanza disappoints.
There could never be another Lorca.
But there's the action of the waves,
the caustic talking of gulls, and the cliffs back
at the beach, the crumbling cascades
like brown, dry waterfalls.
Everything disappoints, even Lorca,
abandoning lovers on train station platforms
and in the smoke of bars.
The boombox reports a soldier's body
has been found in the undergrowth at a public park.
It's made to sound like a scandal.
A secret life is supposed.
Documents were faxed to explain the circumstances,
to paper over the incident, the unanswered questions.
A boy carves initials in the sand with a stick.
His initials?
Those of a new lover?
What about your new love?
Just hope for a love you would surely
have if you could speak in the language of anemones.
The boy erases the initials with a sweep of his foot.
It's all in your mind.
Nothing disappoints, or happens in isolation.
A fighter jet streaks low over the coast, where the boys lie
on pastel towels at careful intervals, pale rosettes
on a sepia wedding cake.
The poem, translated from Spanish,
preens on its own intelligence.
That's the problem.
Had it oiled and combed its hair with a part down the middle,
like a Spanish sailor just off a freighter,
so that a thing of beauty lay before the reader, a thing
in isolation, but not in isolation, as if among others
on a famous beach, one might have thought of the perfume
Lorca favored, or the tanned foot of a stranger,
kicking at surf, testing it.
Too cold for me?
Intelligence, surely, is not the enemy.
Distance, coldness, a regard only for one's own island,
which is fear.
So that's the secret.
OK then, I'll remove my shirt so that you
might have a clear target."