It gets going eventually.
Well, I'll read two more poems.
This next one is a prose poem called Stella Maris.
There was nothing to do on the island.
The dogs chased glass lizards into the dense myrtle bush.
I don't know how the children slept.
Men and women did what they could to extinguish
the brightness of the stars.
One night my own supply of rum ran out,
and I paced the veranda of my little hut on stilts.
A ship was passing.
The air was warm and moist like an animal's tongue.
The island had once been home to pirates and runaway slaves,
and giant sea turtles that crawled out
by moonlight to lay their eggs.
I no longer remembered what brought me there, and always
the sound of the sea like an overtone of eerie applause,
the clapping of the palms of the palmettos.
I was dreaming, slightly intoxicated.
And I found myself standing outside the little Catholic
Church, Stella Maris, star of the sea.
The priest stood before me.
A beaten disheveled man, with ashes on his robes.
And the unmistakable aroma of alcohol,
like an unholy ghost drawing us closer.
These people, he said, waving his arms
around his imaginary flock.
They think love's easy, something nice and tidy
that can be bought.
That makes them feel good about themselves.
Believe me, it's a horrible thing to love.
Love is a terrible thing, terrible.
And I, a non-believer, believed him.
The next day the owner of the liquor store
told me that the priest had been a Jew and a lawyer from New
York before converting and becoming a priest.
Assigned to this, the dregs of the pope's empire.
Sharks and wild boar had thinned out the unbelievers.
And Father Moser drank through the night,
testing his faith with Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I never knew whether or not I had dreamed up
that black-hearted priest, but I left the island shortly.
And only now look back at my darkest hour with nostalgia.