I feel I should discuss some Latin quotes with you. At least one, since Marsh is not here.
On Love. We are, after all, here to celebrate Love.
Old Love.
Really, really old love.
And so I quote:
Amantes sunt amentes.
Lovers are lunatics.
Look at your partner.
Try to remember when you were once sane
Or, like good children of the Enlightenment –
reasonable.
As for myself,
I drink to mad old loves.
Theirs and ours.
S’s gold floppies.
risking death,
in slanting callejones,
then sitting in the Jardin,
the one of their old union,
Gus in our laps,
quivering for us all.
We thank the mariachis: Gracias,
we say,
ahorita no.
Another time perhaps.
The margaritas, rimmed with salt,
in the soft dry air,
Guanajuato at 7,000 feet.
Remembering an old sweetness,
Zihuatanejo in 1960,
Inocentes,
innocents,
in their red Porsch.
Yellow you say?
Young hair in the wind,
mature mariguana under the hood,
zooming back across
the gringo border,
forty and some years ago,
Learning now at last
the subjunctive,
so they can yearn for Mexico
correctly
in the comfortable silences
of this old love
this old dance
to a tune they hear
from the other side of the border.
Look in their eyes.
They are hearing it right now.
Old lunatics,
old friends —
to each other —
and to us.