The dark is here, Señor, Señorita, Corazón Dulce, hearer of my song, Oyente. Qué más digo, what more shall I say? Qué más decir, what more is there to say? For I am sure Old Shanks is dead and gone, torn to pieces like his brother said, and oh the little white jumper is surely too deceased, dust; and the Dwarft too, ashes, and the Show tent ashes on the ground I bet you money. God knows it was rotted enough even when I was under it, could see the stars through rotten holes in it and the wind, even back there, blew pieces of it like wild flags, many nights I heard in the quietness of my tent of gazing, the cracking of the wild flags in the starry wind. That leaves the last thing, God and Jesucristo, father and son, only thing that is the same today and yesterday and forever more. I’m on my way to them.
The dark is here. I’ll take a minute to be quiet and play a little of “The Waltz of the Spotted Dog” for all them that I loved and for all that slipped through these old fingers.
It’s time to say farewell and so goodbye adiós old world, old world is passing away. And so I say so long adiós, so long to all I loved and will not hunt for anymore, to Chupa, Tomasso, Hombre, Hondo, to all adiós adiós so long. And so long adiós to all the Show, Old Shanks and Eddy the Dwarft and the little white jumping dog Junipero Perro, and Edna Pappas of las palabras and Heracles the lion feroz that found his old feroz again, so long, and to the gilded chair and to the jewel wagon, all that I will never find again and will no longer hunt for, all is gone, adiós adiós so long. And so goodbye to you, Oyente patient listener I feel half in love with you. When you sing your songs so close to someone for so long a time and they listen, you feel them listening with love you feel close to that Oyente listener. Oyente there in the dark I have sung you my own very life please to not forget me. So long! Here, take from my lips this kiss whoever you are, dear Oyente. So long! Oyente! The night falls, I cannot see you! Oyente! Have you vanished so quick? Oyente! Where are you hiding? I am alone, la noche baja, la noche cae. Night falls.
16
A Singer at Large
IT IS NIGHT. THE vision has passed. In the ancient fragile city starlings and bells. The world breaks. Cities fail, towns die. Fields vanish and rivers wither; some wild things can be counted, there are so few. A great mystery may be near. I often dream of water, some of it deep. Sometimes, Uncle Ben, I do not wish to live any longer in this world. Sometimes I want to go home, where we all were. That simple house of early solitude and strangers rises before me, built again, melancholy house of the dark entrance, of the door with the forbidding dark figure. But no one would be there to answer my call at that door: Hello! Hello! And you, Ben, would not be there, even as you were not when I went away through that mysterious portal (it was so grand for a house so plain). Uncle Ben! I have today given you back your darling creature; Arcadio! your creator Ben has come to me through you. And I, both teller and listener, solitary maker, grand and absurd and homesick, who am I? what is life? why are we all here where is God?
Yet you, hearing me—who are you, where have you come from, why have you stayed so long to hear me? Oyente! who are we, what is life why are we all here where is God?
Arcadio Page 13