Mike Topp

 

GENTLEMAN ALONE
By Pablo Neruda
Translated by Mike Topp

The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.

Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and panties,
A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,
And women's breasts that glisten like eyes.

The salary man, after a while,
After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,
Has decisively fucked his neighbor,
And now takes her to the miserable movies,
Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,
And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down
With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.

The night of the hunter and the night of the husband
Come together like bed sheets and bury me,
And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are masturbating,
And the animals mount each other openly,
And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically,
And cousins play strange games with cousins,
And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient,
And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought,
Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast,
And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly
On beds big and tall as ships:
So, eternally,
This twisted and breathing forest crushes me
With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth
And black roots like fingernails and shoes.

 

MOVIES

1.

The credits unroll (in a series of dissolves) against a fuchsia background. Clear glass, faceted, jewel-like beads slowly fall from the top of the screen to the bottom--collecting at lower frame level. They gradually fill the frame like a
container until it is entirely packed. The beads shift in space ever so slightly.

2.

The policemen and newspaper reporters have jumped out of the cars and are running up to the pool, in which a body is seen floating. Photographers' bulbs flash in rapid succession. Angle up through the water from the bottom of the pool, as the body floats face downward. It is a well-dressed young man.

3.

Finishes watering it--examines plant to see if it has any signs of growth, finds slight evidence--smiles--one part is sagging--she runs finger along it--raises hand over plant to encourage it to grow.

4.

ANGLE ON A UNIFORMED COP, staring out the window of a POLICE CRUISER as it inches along in the bumper to bumper traffic. Noticing something, he reaches for his radio.

5.

Betty takes a deep breath and fluffs her hair. She grabs the plate of pineapple kabobs and heads for the door. Just before she goes in, she pauses, then plasters on a big wide "stewardess" smile . . .

6.

A BONFIRE has been lit in the middle of the street between the library and the barbershop. Twenty to thirty people are gathered around it still whooping and hollering as the bright ORANGE FLAMES shoot into the air.

7.

The Owner begins indiscriminately loading hard liquor into a cardboard box, leaving Bud and Lynn to look at each other. Bud says the only thing he can think of.

8.

A cloud of dust blows THROUGH THE FRAME as the speeding car sails over the edge of the cliff.