William Tremblay teaches at Colorado State University.
Poem of the Week
April 4, 2005
A street festival dances around Diego, Leon.
Men bear aloft on white crosses, a papier mache Bandit Hero
in big sombero wielding his sword, leering priest
figures, bumping their heads against the stars.
Drums, trumpets, shouts, torches:
---I can see why you paint crowd scenes!
---My paintings are poetry for the illiterate!
They weave down Allende toward the zocalo, past electric lights
strung from tree to tree as rockets shoot phosphorescent
hisses, men set off bonfires. The Judas-figures
go up in flames that reflect off colonial church walls,
pink, orange, green. Leon's eyes follow
a swirling trail of sparks, bell towers seem to tilt,
men on their knees raise their arms
dressed out like cactus limbs, beseeching Heaven.
---It's like Posada's "End of the World."
---Ah, here we are! Diego pulls Leon down a little lane,
jiggles the doorbell. An elderly man in
tuxedo, red slippers, holding a skeleton mask:
---Ah, Diego! And who is this?
He inspects Leon through his pince-nez.
---Don Rosario, show my friend Leon your flea circus.
---I'm preparing for a night on the town, but come.
The skeleton mask conducts them through the corridor
to a greenhouse in the back yard. Don Rosario
throws a switch: Spread out before them
a model of a European city---churches, parks with lawns.
---Here come the fleas!
---Where? Leon squints, begins to scratch his neck.
---Marching, like the shadow of a cloud over the streets.
Behind him Leon hears the words:
The more one believes, the more one sees
In the fairy-tale city of the King of the Fleas.
Leon sees a building like the St. Petersburg Winter Palace:
---The revolution, he whispers.
---These are no ordinary fleas, they aspire to freedom and dignity.
Leon mutters to Diego:---You can't do this to me,
I'm a hero of the Revolution.
---Everyone has his Judas, Leon.
---No arguing, caballeros, it disturbs the fleas.
Don Rosario flips the light off, the greenhouse goes dark,
the greenhouse door swings open,
muffled drums again.
Outside Don Rosario's house Diego takes Leon by the elbow:
---I'll walk you back.
Leon yanks his arm away.
The Judases go up in flames. Leon's shadow,
silhouetted by bonfires cast against a wall, spark
bursts light graffiti:
Crush the Trotskyite Vermin!
---The sky is full of disaster tonight, Diego says,
leading him back to the gates of the Blue House.
Pink rockets light Leon's sweat-stung eyes:
---Get me a dozen white rabbits I can care for, Diego.
In a rain of sparkles Leon sees more graffiti:
Jesus has died, Marx has died,
and I don't feel so good either.
He leans against the wall as if he could not stand
without it, bent double from laughing, his hand
beside a cartoon of himself where his forehead
is circled by a crown of thorns made of bayonets.
-- Bill Tremblay
Reprinted from Shooting Script: Door of Fire
by Bill Tremblay.
Eastern Washington University Press, Spokane, 2003.
Copyright (c) William Tremblay, 2003.
Used with the author's permission.
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