PAX LUSITANICA Poem by Ruy Cinatti

Well, if I remember right it was bad enough
having to give myself to Greeks and Trojans.
But to give myself to Americans, Russians,
and Chinese, arghh! not that, the Portuguese
are bad enough! Those
strutting thugs, those
tiny worms in Sunday-best all week
and then flat-broke on Sundays.
Odysseus' Greeks, well, fine, O.K., a flame
burning on the homeland's altar.
Trojans . . . there's Aeneas, pious guy,
lugging all his people on his back.
Of Portugal, nothing's said, not even the name Da Gama.
But to give myself to Americans, Russians,
and Chinese, arghh! not that, the Portuguese
are bad enough!

I'd like to see myself among Tahitian girls,
Cunning Titiro, a seller of flutes,
living with them in soothed familiarity.
I'd like to give myself to Circe, get bewitched
in symbolic caverns
suffering no dearth of provender,
with a simulacrum, the vision of a dog fettered
by smell to the warm flesh.
Penelope has waited so long for me
she can, like Lisbon, wait a little longer.
But to give myself to Americans, Russians,
and Chinese, arghh! not that, the Portuguese
are bad enough!

My affairs in order, I'd like to see
if I've got it right.
Against Odysseus, I'd like to be a Trojan.
I'd like to have
my trip for free, an end that dignifies,
a toga, a palace . . . all that might
justify
my precarious existence
marked by treason, dread,
the pilot dead, by the dreamer, fire, an alligator
tear . . .
True, there is a Lusitanian smell . . .
I am a Roman.
What I promise, I never do.
But to give myself to Americans, Russians,
and Chinese, arghh!, not that, the Portuguese
are bad enough!