Lost lyrics

I am not a fish out of water. I am a fresh water fish too far down the river, the salt of the estuary entering my respiration.

I am sitting around a crowded table at the port bar that celebrated its centennial recently. At the far end a man in a dowdy green sweater is reading poetry from sheets of paper that swish loudly as he switches them in front of the silent crowd. He is awkwardly hunched at the microphone under a liquid orange beam of light. Dim lights shine under the bar, and the tea lights on the tables cast twinkling glares, and the pulsing ends of cigarettes move without hurry back and forth from mouths to ashtrays. I sip my beer in the dark, staring at the man.

I understand most of his words. I cannot hear poetry. Poetry is such a function of intimacy with language. The breath-catching moments are the combinations of words that have seemed always to have no relation to one another until suddenly they appear together, perfect, like a secretly eloped couple. I know nothing of common or uncommon modes of expression in this language. It is only recently that 'expression' could even be applied to my functioning in Spanish.

All I can follow is the tone in the reading, the signs of emotion and rythym in the words. This man reads like a lecturer--steadily, clearly, but dully. His poetry sounds like a town hall opening ceremony if I close my eyes. I look around the table to see how the others are responding. One poet leans to another and they whisper something and laugh: is the poetry bad? Or is it only friends sharing a beer, ignoring the speaker for the moment? I remember in the beginning days when I would sit at the table with the host family, wondering if they were talking about me. It's a similar kind of paranoia. I am a lone gringa listening to poetry in Spanish. I feel superfluous, worthy of mockery: a poser. The room is dead silent. No one speaks, claps or whispers betwen poems. We sit staring at the man as he shifts his papers and begins again. There is a lot of staring in this country. Too much, I think, wishing someone would comment or drum or even do that terrible snapping of fingers.

The man finishes and finally the crowd claps. I lean over and tell my friend about the poetry slams that used to be popular; how I would go and sit in the back quietly while the older, hipper crowd would shout and cheer and hoot. Once I wore leather pants from a second hand store, a push towards cool. The poet noticed these and used me in his act. I blushed like I still do when something embarasses me or catches me off guard. They asked me to judge and I lied and told them I had to leave, but sat, bright red, through the rest of the show. I lost that poet's photocopied booklet years ago, but would have liked the chance to look back on it now.

Other than the silence, the atmosphere is familiar, making me feel all the more alien. I look around my table at all of the figurines that have decorated my life so many times, in so many guises. The three young poets: one man in a velvet jacket, hair dishevelled; another in button-up plaid with curly hair combed out to be large; the woman beautiful with wild waves in her hair and dark eyeliner on both lids. At her shoulder, the affectionate and flamboyant film student gestures, wearing an antiquated suit with a silk vest, his lined eyes and labret piercing signalling his contemporaneity. Then there is the painter in his argyle sweater and page boy cap, leaning precariously over the candle to hand me scraps of english to edit, bits and pieces to be sent to an uncertain love in Canada. At my side, the unexpected arrival still carrying his camping gear is awkwardly above us on a scrambled-for bar stool. Finally, at the end of the table, an old and muttering poet in a knitted skullcap, papers somewhere within his worn leather bag. He is talking across me to the young poets. They are discussing flowers in Santiago in spring. This relates to women, somehow, and then to ways of perceiving.

I am sure that I have been here before.

One of the trio of word gamers from my table is called to the front by the announcer. A few copies of his recently published book make their way from bags onto our table. The person next to me flips through with purpose to find the poems as they are spoken, to help me. I explain that seeing the words won't make them anymore electric to me than hearing them. I prefer to listen. His poems punch the air with the impression of meaning. The improvement in style leaves me with a lower comprehension, but I enjoy his reading better than the last.

The young man returns, the bar claps loudly, and the old man is called. He rustles through the bag a little too long and then makes his way to the front of the room. He begins speaking, but the mike is on the table. He realizes this after a few sentences, whether of his own accord or from a tip I cannot tell. Rearranged, he begins to read in the rocking, near autistic way of those who live their lives fully within their art. It is, needless to say, unintelligible to me. I like it though, better than the lecturing fumbler, better than the confident and snapping man my age. The tones rise and fall and whatever these words are, whatever they might signify to the people sitting with me, I sit watching them mean absolutely everything to the poet.

I am watching a man read his poetry; I am watching a man deliver his art; that is all. Without signification, without relationship to me, I watch the words matter to him. When he returns to the table I tell him how much I enjoyed watching his reading despite understanding nothing. The film student throws his head back and laughs, delighted, clapping at the joke. I light his cigarette and laugh too, even though I wasn't joking.