Evocation

Consumptive and blue
Casagemas stares out of Life.
That same palid stare
he had leveled like a gun
in a Montmartre cafe
in Paris, 1901,
with disbelief and longing
at his Germaine.
Who seduced him jokingly
only to cause him pain.
Who gave herself to other men,
at their slightest whim.
Saving all her pity and disgust
for him.

Casagemas lies at the foot
of Picasso's Evocation,
lost somewhere in green.
Mourners crouch at his side,
and somehow he dreams
put down the gun!
of her upturned, pleading face
what are you doing Carlos?
her eyes gasping for him
for God's sake leave her!
the shouts had risen;
he in a loving act
had turned it to himself
and pulled the trigger.

From his body the ghost
rises in fantastic shapes.
A blurred host
of night-gowned children,
silken wisps of smoke,
the figures of whores
naked, in suspenders,
one straddling a white mare
mocking his dead virginity,
laughing in silence.
Far above him an image,
faded and spectral, hangs
like the white body of a diver
or the skeleton of a horse.