["Pomp and Circumstance"]
["Pomp and Circumstance"]
Step up and keep those butterflies in your pocket.
The voice of Contralto, a cross between Almas Brooks and John Wayne.
All right, kitties, let's saddle up.
Its staccato plosives, accustomed to obedience, burst through the open doors of the uptown IRT.
Eyes that all but never lifted from the times and post, the daily news and Eldiario,
lifted now and caught other eyes, eyebrows all but atrophied, arched now in amused curiosity.
The trickle of five-year-olds, two-by-two and holding hands, turned into a babbling stream
that flooded the car, a school of pie-bowl fry and hollochlin snowshoots, except for one in eclipse.
I mean you, Gabriel, sus mariposas, dentro del pocket.
Hola, senor. Gabriel announced to a dark blue suit and nice tie.
¿Eres uno de esos hombres que abusan niños?
Gabriel, Gabriel, why I want to know, are you molesting that man, please?
A yellow butterfly lit on the nice man's nose, his eyes crossed.
You look funny, senor.
Another, two more, and then a score of yellow butterflies descended on his Wall Street Journal
and obscured the news of the rise and fall of IBM.
But the man sent them packing with the practiced flick of the wrist.
Across the aisle, one settled on point like a falcon in drag on the outstretched hand
of a toppled Nikolai Lennon and a few seats away on the travel page of LD Audio
and a droid half-dozen from the Corde de Ballet reduced the airfare from Santo Domingo by 90%.
I know what you're up to, no hagas eso. Gabriel, stop it.
A squadron of butterflies swooped up toward the window and formed a word or name across it,
Chico, or Rico, or maybe Kiro, who was said to go up like a bird in flight
before melting into the expanding yellow mist.
And now the beggar, on his ancient paper cup, a blue and white coffee cup
from the Delphi deli on 8th and 53rd, or maybe just the end of the line in Astoria.
Around the cracked and crusted rim, a freeze of yellow butterflies
arranged itself above the white and blue discobalus,
poised forever and forever young amid the ruins and everlasting flame
of blue and white and blue and white and blue and white.
And then came the beggar's picture of ladies and gentlemen,
police note, I got nothing up my sleeves,
as he began to spill butterflies like yellow confetti from his antique cup,
from his antique attic cup turned cornucopia.
You put him up to that.
Oigade, Gabriel, absolutamente, I mean absolutely, no vas.
By the time the train breached in the daylight of 125th Street,
the car was awash from stem to stern with yellow butterflies.
The doors stumped open and out poured the children into the late winter sun,
two by two and holding hands, impelled by the teacher's sharp command,
sforzato and more than a little frenetic, toro al mundo, out.
And then came Gabriel, small and dark with a big mole
an inch to the right of the thick black mustache he would have grown in later years.
Yellow butterflies danced in a ring around his thick black curls.
A thousand butterflies clung to his arms and shoulders like a radiant yellow mantle.
Slowly he began to rise, swaying and lifting like a stubby shagal.
Gabriel, you come right down here this instant, ahora.
He swooped and dipped and rose to the west as the wind rose
and the blind musician on the station platform began to improvise a melody
on one string of his violin to accompany Gabriel's lazy circling toward the sun.
But only thus shouted the children,
just where, Gabriel, do you think you're going? cried the teacher.
The musician stared straight into the sun without so much as a blink.
His eyes, two orbs of pure cotton set in a chalk-black face,
his body and though rocking a piacere.
Higher and higher Gabriel rose and the melody rose too
until the figure became a speck against the blinding sun
so small that only the old musician could see it
and disappeared on a note so high that only Gabriel could hear it.
