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The surface of
the road ahead is made from scattered vowels kept in place by sullen consonants. The makers have left their signatures behind. It is hard to drive across. Names c r u n c h beneath the tyres like broken glass. We continue along an anonymous road. *
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Rimbaud is in town & I’ve arranged to have lunch with him. People seeing the pair of us out strolling arm in arm will undoubtedly come out with something demeaning about the relationship. The aging German with his French toyboy — both parts are true but not together. I’m not inclined that way although I do find his anarchy quite exciting. The British. Probably jealous. They trumpet their propriety, but I’ve observed some interesting truths about them from my times at the Museum. Still, we’ll play along. Lunch with Arthur will be ham & watercress sandwiches, a pot of tea, perhaps some scones, taken at the proper pace in the sedate environment of a tearoom somewhere in the West End even though both of us would be more at home with coffee & croissants in Soho. A pity Wimbledon hasn’t been invented yet. Otherwise we could go there & sit in the stands & listen to the plonk plonk of the tennis balls going back & forth as he tells me that in his new untitled volume he makes the point Voici le temps des Assassins to which I’d say, returning his serve, Maybe so, but Demain sera le temps des Travailleux. People around would tell us to shush — Damned Foreigners! — but we’d ignore them. Then he’d tell me how they promised to bury in darkness the tree of good & evil, to deport tyrranic respectability so that we might bring hither our very pure love. I’d think about it as I chased this deep lob to the backcourt & probably reply that life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Dialectical deuce. A satisfied silence from both of us. We’d smoke a cigarette & laugh, & watch the white-clad players below us try to get one over on their opponent. & then, at the end of the match, as we were making our way down the stairs, I’d turn to him & say You know you got it all wrong about the vowels. They don’t have separate colours, they’re all the same. Red like the blood of workers. We will not meet again. Not on a grass court anyway.
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