MICHAEL BALILI | 1873 Bonnie and Clyde

MICHAEL BALILI

1873 Bonnie and Clyde

THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS POEM. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE TRANSLATOR.

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Then they settle on a motel, an edge
         of the world, among its many edges. The bodies fall
on the arranged bed sheet, pleated, now ruined.
                  They rummage the closets for soap
and toothbrushes, toothpaste; they find their wine on the mini-bar;
         they drink on the rearranged bed, these two people,
whose distance from each
                  other suffers the contrasts of poles.

A pen and a gun sums it all—(of
symbols, their fault of speaking in another
tongue. The indirectness. No,
it was never
a flower)—the danger

of having had the car chases, police,
   sex, life on the highway, casualties
of strings dragged
   along the way, before
they get there, there is an idea
   of everything together.
Love is madness, the mess and the follow:
   it is the smell of a burning clutch—
it has gone far.

                               Then, the shouting, gesture of the gun pointed
at the lover’s heart. The threat
so that he stays, this, longer. ( The murmur
of the heart, unequal beats then
         the gunshot.
Sound of things falling from a table. The lamp shade cracks, the bulb shatters.)

Then the shooter comes
to the wounded. The blood gushing forth on his left leg.
He lets go off the gun, then covers the wound, the blood in his palms, among the evidences.
         Then the hard persuasion to “come live with me again and be my” love,
                                                                                 the line is cut with a Sorry.
         And the wounded refuses not because he doesn’t love him anymore; he is silent.
The wound hurts to speak and the bullet underneath his skin
         runs the reasons of things complete, looming the trespasses the body has endured
through that love.

[RIMBAUD AND VERLAINE]