back there?”
“Ermita, kumusta ka?” he greeted her in her language.
“Jack!” Lily cried, bounding through the foyer.
He scooped her up like a pet and carried her to the library.
Ermita followed behind them, warning, “Be careful, Lily. You gon’ get
sick from tha’ dirty man.”
They sat together in the pristine tent pitched in her spotless room
and he explained that he had discovered something wonderful. “The
essence of poetry,” he said. “The secret connection behind all things.”
When she asked him how he discovered it, he pulled the Rimbaud
book out of his knapsack and read her a page. His voice thrummed
with contagious excitement.
A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black belt, hairy with bursting flies
Bumbling and buzzing over stinking cruelties,
Pits of darkness; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
High glacial spears, white kings, quivering of flowers;
I, vermillions, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
In anger or penitent drunkenness;
U, waves, divine shudderings of green seas,
Peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Which alchemy prints on high studious foreheads;
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences crossed by Angels and by Worlds
— O the Omega! the violet ray of Her Eyes!…
“You see?” he cried, “You see?”
Lily did her best to appear enthusiastic. All she saw was his
excitement, and it infected her. Something sticky bubbled in her
veins. “It’s beautiful, yes,” she said.
“There are connections. There are connections between
everything!” he gushed. “This proves it!”
“It’s a poem?” she asked, “But it doesn’t rhyme.”
“It does in French. Most of it does. It was written in French.
Look, this whole book. I don’t know. Every poem. They all…” Yak
ABYSSINIA
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