If the old Slav is sad,
walking stooped and slow
to the end of the chateau’s jetty,
is it because I found him
away from his desk
of translations, watching game shows
on the channel from Cannes,
or that the remote control
he is enthralled to
has in some way failed or confounded him?
Or is it because he breaks line at buffet
and suffers stares of wonder,
or that he eats
as through a hood,
and hoards wine at his plate?
Or is it the grayness of today’s Mediterranean
following yesterday’s azure
in the brief window of plenty
he has been awarded
for these three months of winter,
or the grayness of all his sweaters,
or his hair that was once bold?
Though they talked—with understanding,
it seemed—I do not think he saw himself
in the village drunk, who died last week
on the bench outside our gate.
And so it may be the weight
of one moment, the way the day began,
the bad dream carried over,
or something his father said too many times.
Or it may be that the skeleton of fence
and bunker at the jetty’s end
has opened the album of far-off Sachsenhausen,
his barbed-wire house in 1941,
labor that almost set him free from breath.
It may be the hormonal tide falling slack
or simply the friendly note we all got,
reminding us in two days our residencies are done.
How he danced last night
in front of the big fire at our farewell dinner
and now is sad.
The picture he had made me take—
him at his desk, manuscript in hand,
the fine room and windowed sea as background—
I couldn’t be sure if it was a keepsake
or a flash of the cynical, saving Slavic wit,
something he’d share with cronies back home,
his photo joke of luxury on loan.
When I was sick from shellfish toxin,
he wrote a funny poem for me in French,
rhyming comique with la bombe atomique.
He wrote that the mussel is a little beast,
but soft, savory, and choice.
In Residence
James Seay was born in Panola County, Mississippi, in 1939. His publications include four collections of poetry (most recently, Open Field, Understory), two limited editions of poetry, and a documentary film about big-game hunting in East Africa, In the Blood (1990), co-written with the film’s director George Butler. His poetry has been selected for inclusion in some thirty anthologies. He has also published essays in general-interest magazines such as Esquire and in literary journals such as Antaeus. From 1987-1997 he served as director of the Creative Writing Program at UNC-CH. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship (1996-1999) for excellence in undergraduate teaching.