BARCELONA - 2.5 YEARS LATER Poem by Danie Marais

We sit together in a restaurant, maybe for the last time.
The name of the place is La Veronica -
rare minimalist chic in Barcelona's gothic deal, at that:
lovely salad, a bottle of red wine and a bottle of water for us,
a marriage behind us
and your glasses are dark and your top is the red of war.
The chairs and tables are white white oblivion white.
My shirt is blue, a noisy Hawaian blue.
Some walls are red, your war-red,
and other walls are white white.

I don't talk any more,
but your climb into one last battle -

You say
I shouldn't ever dare to even start trying
to say anything to you
about new opportunities or a fresh start.
This is a crisis.
You're suffering.
You're right down there in the muck.
It is not a learning experience.
We should all go to Yugoslavia to learn
all about war and death and destruction.

You say, more softly now, another guy had also left you years ago
when the relationship, you thought, was okay.
"Er war auch ein lieber Kerl.
Menschen haben ihn gemocht."
Yes, he was also a nice guy like me, you say,
but it afforded you a lot of pleasure
when you heard later
that he was always having problems with women,
you tell me and then close your mouth finally
into a thin, bitter line.

Frustrated, you twist the neck of a sugar sachet
so that white sugar falls slowly
onto the raving orange table cloth,
while you begin to cry behind your dark glasses.

I drink red wine and feel sick.
It's harrowing to see you so,
but I don't say anything
because I know you won't listen.

I let you cry
because all I can really remember apparently
is a dwelling under the dome of a troubled sky,
a ‘Wohnung', a hired place of loneliness
where people were always noisy and getting homesick,
where full-blast effort always came out at a drip,
where you had always already slept,
where only your poster of Betty Blue above the stereo
waited for me late at night to come home alone
and play her favourite razor sad songs.

I remember a marriage bed
where after a year or two
my love always had to wipe
its muddy feet or dry wet hair or clip nails or assume the position
for this like a dog on the ground
or outside on the balcony had to sleep,
while I came to lie beside you at night
like an insomniac soft-toy.

Gee, Schatzi, I swear I remember
a home and a marriage like
an elephant burial ground for dreams -
a place where love and potplants
had been left for dead.

But you stop crying,
look at the nearly empty bottle of wine,
the full bottle of water
and say thoughtfully, in a strange voice:
"Tja, irgendwie waren wir nie große Wassertrinker."

And now my eyes swim
because yes, somehow we had not been great water drinkers,
in one way or another we were just not
never-ever whatever, somehow, anyway.

We drink the last few swigs of wine in silence -
the restaurant's cool acid jazz
blowing blowing gone;
two heavily tattooed punks with skateboards under their arms
walking past the huge windows.

"La cuenta, por favor."