The grandmother watched Geryon cross the porch and sit down between them
in a deck chair
without interrupting her sentence—this idea that your lungs will explode
if you can’t reach the surface— lungs don’t explode
they collapse without oxygen I have it from Virginia Woolf
who once spoke to me at a party not of course
about drowning of which she had no idea yet—have I told you this story before?
I remember the sky behind her was purple she
came towards me saying Why are you alone in this huge blank garden
like a piece of electricity? Electricity?
Maybe she said cakes and tea true we were drinking gin it was long past
teatime but she was a highly original woman
I was praying God let it have been cakes and tea I’ll tell her my anecdote
of Buenos Aires those Argentines
so crazy for tea every day at five the little cups but she drifted away the little
translucent cups like bones you know
in Buenos Aires I had a small dog but I see by your face I am wandering.
Geryon jumped.
No ma’am, he yelled
as the deck chair gouged him. Gift from Freud but that is another story.
Yes ma’am?
He drowned not Freud the dog and Freud made a joke it was not a funny joke
having to do with incomplete transference I cannot
recall the German wording the German weather however I remember exactly.
What was the weather ma’am?
Cold and moonlit. You met with Freud at night? Only in summer.