Book I
The curtain might rise anywhere on a single speaker
I met in Mesilla
The Cautious Gunslinger
of impeccable personal smoothness
and slender leather encased hands
folded casually
to make his knock.
He would show you his map.
There is your domain.
Is it the domicile it looks to be
or simply a retinal block
of scats in,
he will flip the phrase
the theater of impatience.
If it is where you are,
the footstep in the flat abov
e in a foreign land
or any shimmer the city
sends you the prompt sounds
of a metropolitan nearness
he will unroll the map of locations.
His knock resounds
inside its own smile, where?
I ask him is my heart.
Not this pump he answers
artificial already and bound
touching me
with his leathern finger
as the Queen of Hearts burns
from his gauntlet into my eyes.
Flageolets of fire
he says there will be.
This is for your sadly missing heart
the girl you left in
Juarez, the blank
political days press her now
in the narrow adobe
confines of the river town
her dress is torn
by the misadventure of
her gothic search
The mission bells are ringing
in Kansas.
Have you left something out:
Negative, says my Gunslinger,
no thing is omitted.
Time is more fundamental than space.
It is, indeed, the most pervasive
of all the categories
in other words theres plenty of it.
And it stretches things themselves
until they blend into one,
so if youve seen one thing
youve seen them all.
I held the reins of his horse
while he went into the desert
to pee. Yes, he reflected
when he returned, that's less.
How long, he asked
have you been in this territory.
Years I said. Years.
Then you will know where we can have
a cold drink before sunset and then a bed
will be my desire
if you can find one for me
I have no wish to continue
my debate with men,
my mare lathers with tedium
her hooves are dry
Look they are covered with the alkali
of the enormous space
between here and formerly.
Need I repeat, we have come
without sleep from Nuevo Laredo.
And why do you have such a horse
Gunslinger? I asked. Don't move
he replied
the sun rests deliberately
on the rim of the sierra.
And where will you now I asked.
Five days northeast of here
depending of course on whether one's horse
is of iron or flesh
there is a city called Boston
and in that city there is ahotel
whose second floor has been let
to an inscrutable Texan named Hughes
Howard? I asked
The very same.
And what do you mean by inscrutable,
oh Gunslinger?
I mean to say that He
has not been seen since 1833.
But when you have found him my Gunslinger
what will you do, oh what will you do?
You would not know
that the souls of old Texans
are in jeopardy in a way not common
to other men, my singular friend.
You would not know
of the long plains night
where they carry on
and arrange their genetic duels
with men of other states -
