THE ENGLISH GARDENS
229
bullfighter, see. I'm thinkin of a play, a play about love, and this
play'll
be
all
about this bullfight with Theseus and how you get
hung on poetry and how it's really
love.
Get it? You and me we
fight out a poem and its like everybody's lookin at us, but who's
gettin hurt? I wanna feelin of blood and this Theseus and this
big bull and it'll have a line like:
Crete, there'S a lot of sun there/
And they yell 'Theseus, get in there!'/And
..."
(At this point,
the red-faced maid carried in the tray of food and beer bottles.)
Nicolas looked, briefly, went on,
"And there's no hotdogs, no
mustard/Nobody's selling anything. Just the big sound of
Greeks!
...
You get it?"
Meredith was fascinated. This kind of involvement, the im–
mediacy Manas conveyed, made
him
at once grateful and a little
envious. More than that, Manas calling on him now seemed to
include him as a part of the vast action of poetry. For the mo–
ment, he could do no more than get
to
his feet and bustle around
putting sandwiches together and snapping back the porcelain
stoppers on the beer bottles. "You know, Nicolas," he said, as he
worked, "it's a wonderful idea ... Greece ... I ..."
"I'll just drink outa the bottle," Nicolas interjected.
"Oh, yes. Good idea."
Meredith went back to his sandwich making.
As
there was
a silence beside him, he imagined perhaps there was awkward–
ness because Manas was hungry. He tried bridging this by say–
ing, "Your poems, Nicolas, uh ... 'Flybait'? I ..."
"'Jailbait', Meredith," Manas corrected
him,
through a
large mouthful of cheese and ham, "Poems Out of Confinement
-that's the way they described."
The following silence was extremely painful to Meredith
until, looking up, he realized his guest was occupied eating, a
bland look on his face. So he contented himself not explaining
his
mistake and merely sipped from his own bottle.
"Let's hear that poem you got up your sleeve, Meredith,
and
I'll tell you about my new book's coming out,
Hello Doom.
How's that for a title?"
