Quim Font, Revisited

The next day I saw him (maybe I was unconsciously seeking him out), and I walked toward him, my steps very slow, very patient, so slow that sometimes the people going by in buses on the street may get the idea that we don't move, but we do, I have no doubt that we do, and when he saw me his lips began to tremble, as if just seeing me triggered some urgent message, and as he passed me I heard the same words again: Ulises has disappeared. And only then did I realize that he meant Ulises Lima, the young visceral realist poet whom I'd seen for the last time behind the wheel of my shiny Ford Impala in the first minutes of 1976, and I realized that black clouds had begun to cover the sky again, that above Mexico's white clouds the black clouds drifted, impossibly heavy and terrifyingly imperious, and that I had to be careful and take refuge in pretense and silence.