Avenida da Liberdade
1.
During a pause in the action
a shoeshine man reads an
american western in translation.
He looks good, all in denim,
hunched toward the empty seat
before him, deep into showdowns
on the frontiers of the imaginary.
a shoeshine man reads an
american western in translation.
He looks good, all in denim,
hunched toward the empty seat
before him, deep into showdowns
on the frontiers of the imaginary.
2.
He runs a newsstand with a few old books
on the side, histories in sets of four or eight,
an academic study of Beckford in Sintra,
marked esgotado and therefore overpriced.
I pick up a book, leaf it briefly, put it back,
the old guy descends, curves around me,
touches all the books in the row, restoring order,
his order, that he looks down at all day long.
I do not buy and, I see, he’s satisfied.
on the side, histories in sets of four or eight,
an academic study of Beckford in Sintra,
marked esgotado and therefore overpriced.
I pick up a book, leaf it briefly, put it back,
the old guy descends, curves around me,
touches all the books in the row, restoring order,
his order, that he looks down at all day long.
I do not buy and, I see, he’s satisfied.
Lisbon
April 4, 1996
George Monteiro is a lifelong student and teacher of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, contributing to the scholarship on numerous writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Adams, Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot and Bob Dylan. His latest book is Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil and After: A Poetic Career Transformed (McFarland, 2012).
Image from http://www.timeslips.org/stories/4447
