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By Root 372 0

at first suspected it was an ironic gesture; several people laughed. The celebrated American fellow cannot get four names deep into the list of the most famous Spanish poets of the twentieth century. “Jiménez and Machado,” I finally said, at least separating the poets out, but it was too late; I had embarrassed myself, the foundation, and I had ruined everything with Teresa. María José said we would take only one more question because of time, but surely she meant because of shame, because of the great shame the foundation felt at sponsoring an American phony, although she was no doubt personally delighted with the scene.

When I confirmed the last question wasn’t for me, I didn’t listen; I just counted the seconds until María José thanked us and asked the crowd to applaud, made some announcement about another panel, asked the crowd to applaud again, and then the lights were fully on and the audience slowly began to leave its seats. Before I could flee, Teresa was upon me, smiling as if nothing had happened, assuring me I had done wonderfully, then chatting with the other panelists. I sat there and said to myself: You’ll be gone in six weeks. You will never see any of these people again. María José cannot nullify your fellowship because you mangled names. None of this matters. Not Teresa or the panel or Spain or Spanish literature or literature in general. Now María José was thanking each of the panelists in turn; she reached me and said my contributions had been brilliant. I smiled a mirthless smile that communicated infinite disdain and thanked her. To myself I was saying: You don’t love Teresa and she doesn’t love you. None of this is real. You don’t like Madrid, with its tourists and dust and heat and innumerable Pietàs and terrible food. The fucking fascists. You are ready to quit smoking, to clean up, to return to friends and family. You have outgrown poetry. You will be a legitimate scholar or a lawyer but you are done with Teresa and hash and drinking and lying and lyric and the intersections thereof. I have never been here, I said to myself. You have never seen me.

__________________________

In the last phase of my research fireflies were disappearing. Bats were flying around confused in the middle of the day, colliding with each other, falling into little heaps. Bees were disappearing, maybe because of cell phone radiation, maybe because of perfume, maybe because of candy. It was the deadliest day since the invasion began. Unmanned drones made sorrowful noise overhead. It was 1933. The cities were polluted with light, the world warming. The seas were rising. The seas were closing over future readers. Confused trees were blooming early; you could view the pics from space online. It was 1066, 312. Why not let the children touch the paintings? You could see the hooded prisoners in orange jumpsuits behind the concertina wire. I was standing before The Descent, oil on oak, hash and caffeine; I hadn’t been there in a while and the blue was startling. 1936, 1492, 800, 1776. Meanwhile, life’s white machine. The great artist and the museum guard. Having nothing to say and saying it into a tiny phone. ¿Porqué nací entre espejos? I wondered if the guard in the Reina Sofía ever wore her necklace. Before the reading, I had a couple of hours to kill. Bajo el agua / siguen las palabras. I left the museum for the park.

It was a beautiful day, unseasonably cool, and the park was crowded; there were puppet shows and portraitists near El Estanque. The hash dealers were back, or reinforcements had arrived, milling around the trees. I found a bench and opened my chapbook; it was wonderfully made, its quality anachronistic, befitting a dead medium. Letterpressed on Italian paper, hand sewn. Arturo had printed a thousand copies. Teresa’s name only appeared on the front matter, as she had insisted. Arturo had invited everybody to the reading and celebration. I’d even agreed to forward the announcement to my entire inbox, although I only knew four or five people in Spain. I was wearing my suit. I’d received an e–mail María José sent