"In this green planet swirling in the primal night,
I met my enemy and embraced him." Translation:
"Women desire men as much as men desire women."
Furthermore, her biological clock was going
Tick tock, confusing everyone.
It
wasn't snowing.
He didn't betray her. She didn't say when.
"I'm leaving you," she said, in a fit of exultation,
The day he stopped smoking. He still needed a light.
She called him a romantic fool, but she didn't mean
To make him feel bad. She just wanted to love him
With the pure love that linked the murderer and the whore
In the attic, where the lights had grown dim.
Yet the darkness was green, however drab the scene
Where danger took the stranger, and the heroine
In his arms was someone he hadn't met before
And didn't expect to meet again
In the seedy familiar hotel room with the bullets flying
All around them. Yes, and they weren't dying,
And the imaginary spies of childhood were still spying
On them, the sinful and tormented ones,
Hungry for ordinary corrupt human love, and bound
To tum up wherever a lively crisis could be found:
A lost breed, the sort of chap who knew all about guns,
Having used them for Russian Roulette, and won.
(In memoriam Graham Greene
J
1904-1991)
CLAIRE NICOLAS WHITE
Lost Daughter
Ten years later I still haunt
High School corridors
in search of girls with blazing hair
coiffed like lionesses
who suddenly burst into song
o mio dolce ardor
their voices frail as reeds
but sweet
pigeon- toed half women
that promise ripeness.
