I. Mimi at the Cabaret Vert
MIMI la Brunette, each crimson evening
sways her silver serpent arms,
peals in half falsetto notes,
at the Cabaret Vert
And with greedy eyes the coarse-lipped men internally undress her.
But I sit crumpled by a marble-breasted table,
the curacoa is vitriol to my chapped, dry lips.
I see through Mimi—I see through her tragedies
and I see through the subtle cosmetics
of her tired face.
(She bore a still-born bastard once,
the man she loves, a black-eyed corporal
has shell-shock and nigh throttled her in bed).
And Mimi la Brunette, each crimson evening
peals in half falsetto notes,
sways her silver serpent arms
at the Cabaret Vert.
II. Malaguenas
BODY erect and arm defiantly curved,
she flings small steps to the clack of her castanets,
which snap their rhythm at one, more musical
than the slight scrape of the plectrum on mandoline strings.
She turns and yet so slowly, so haughtily ...
I wonder if she is an Empress masquerading
in this dim-lighted, ill-reputed café.
Click and the rhythm swims to Pedro’s head,
whose features contain the lineaments of appreciation.
Clack and the rhythm swims to Sancha’s head.
Whom then shall she favour with a rose?
Perhaps she will give no look, but flicker
flicker for a moment the darkness of her eyelids
and freeze the heart in Pedro’s body beating.
The rhythm ceases; Pedro is not the favoured one.
A gleam of dagger and muffled fall of a body.