3. what about the play

        and what about

        the play,

        for we two were meant

first

to fret

and strut

upon a stage

       

        our “year-long affair” started in 1934, some silly

spring-

break, well

        before the war,

        no epic scope about it

you had been, Rick, when I met you back in Paris,

a well-heeled lawyer, married

to the daughter of some mogul,

and a father of two children,

and I knew all about it, you told me while we were making

out

that first time,

hiding on the roof of that hotel,

after the party, we

had been dancing,

I was

a kept

dame,

my ridiculous uncle (you would characterize him

as “that perfumed thing that called itself

a man”)

paid for the “beauty

and chic”

which you fancied then, 

but that part I hadn’t told you, how

could I?,

and when you saw us walking into La Belle Aurore you broke

down

        it had been, I say in the play, of our story

so far,

up to my coming with Victor into that “tawdry café” in Casablanca

and spending the night upstairs in your apartment,

and saying to each other, in the morning, all those ugly things,

it had been, I say, “a fairy tale

        with a nasty ending”,

        but the definition stands, applies

        as well

        to the whole affair,

        just look at you, look

        at me, we’ve made

        a mess

        of it,

        haven’t we