The battered vintage Corona clattered in its case,
inpounded dark and red ribbon
taut as a bandana round a migraine.
Plunket’s manicured fingers translating her unwritten diaries.
Fifteen of them, ripe for manufacture.
[Sunday. The ferreteria was shut and there was no ant powder.]
The six o’clock clunk of pilgrim gin
rattling the light in late August sun
as it drenched the deformities
of centuries old olive trees
in reaffirming aridity.
[The valley in Venezuela had been covered in pleasant shady trees
interlaced in artificial avenues
full of green screaming parrots and pure simple doves]
He stared at the lonely slice of green lemon
in his near-empty glass.
‘Juanito!’
The yacht he never bought
when his ship failed to come in
was, too, named Catalina.
He’d left her in her numbered berth,
ballast of portent discarded,
moored in memory.
He swirled the last of his gin.
‘Juanito!’
Chin-chink!
Like an anchor chain.
[Mountain rivulets ran in ribbons through the lanes
bordered by hundreds of butterflies
the air was full of incense anxiety and hope]
Damn. It was Sunday and he was out of cigarettes.
An excuse for dinner at Cas Catalina, they had a machine.
His lips watered at the thought of a solomillo,
his eyes at the sound of her name.
Later the ceremony of kissing her yellow ribbon
in its Romeo y Julietas box.
Recall was a chessboard of Bolivar squares.
Julian Isaacs
.