Free The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights by Reinaldo Arenas

stealthy night-snail tread.
The rings of Uranus—or is it Saturn?—
for your sweet arrival burn,
for you shall cunningly dive, ah-ha!,
    into the repertoire of my saliva.
     
O glorious grace-filled secular world,
O faun that plays upon my toconema curled
making it stir and rise at thy embrace—
O bed-meadow infused with sacred grace!
     
    The deeper the digging, the more treasure,
    the deeper the hole, the greater the pleasure,
    O buried Pharaoh of blind eye.
     
The slippery attack,
like a mule’s kick,
fitting rings to finger—
ring after ring, kick after kick—
this is a humdinger!
    F IFO :
Somebody shut up that prick!
And in the ocean fling him!
    Soldiers and midgets, carrying long sticks, roll Lezama along the Malecón down to the seaside, to the sound of tremendous noise and shouting.
    L EZAMA : (as he rolls down to the sea)
This plunge into the depths shall be my epiphany;
I greet my descent like proud Antigone.
But wait a moment—tell me, can ya?—
is it true that my friend Rodrigo de Triana
has given up on sodomy?
    He falls into the water, causing the tide to rise so high that it floats the Malecón—and swamps Avellaneda’s boat.
    A VELLANEDA : (bobbing about in the waves)
    Sea—
    for the world,
    profound
    consolation.
I think I’ll fly.
Perhaps in the sky
I shall find
liberation.
    F IFO : (to Paula Amanda)
So you recommended this clown, huh?
And then he practically drowns us!
This time, Paula, you’ve really fucked up!
    R AÚL :
And with all these expenses, we’re going to be bankrupt!
    F IFO :
You’d better think of something fast!
    P AULA A MANDA : (desperate)
I promise I’ll get someone more suitable,
someone who’ll be truly memorable
and utterly without parallel.
    F IFO :
Such as?
    P AULA A MANDA :
I know! Julián del Casal!
    Paula Amanda and other police officers compel Horcayés to immediately bring Casal back to life. The poet rises on the wall of the Malecón in a worn and faded nineteenth-century suit.
    J ULIÁN D EL C ASAL : (looking out to sea where Avellaneda is in full flight)
    I am filled with a longing to commit suicide,
and therefore I applaud your own suicidal flight.
I, too, sigh for those distant realms
    whose skies are filled with halcyons,
    gliding over the blue ocean.
A paradise—that is what I want to live in;
a paradise of centurions
beckoning
me to blow jobs.
    F IFO : (enraged)
What! Call out the firing squads!
No—better make it cannons!
    While the artillery prepares its cannons, Casal goes on with his poem.
    C ASAL :
    To see a different sky, a different sun a-rising,
    a different beach, and different horizons
where, singing like a mockingbird,
before a squad of men with vibrating erections
I can hover like a hummingbird
and sip at their sweet nectar.
    F IFO :
Ready, aim—and fa-a-ahr!
    C ASAL : (with the cannons trained on him)
Oh, if I, like you, should seek exile
far from this isle of crocodiles,
no place would make me cheerier
than exotic, warm Algeria,
where a hundred—no, a thousand—studly men
would await me in their palaces
(all ruddy and golden)
with their phalluses
emboldened.
    F IFO :
Not another word, d’you hear!
    C ASAL : (as fast as he can talk)
Yes—Algiers!
That would be my intention.
Where every man’s bisexual or queer
and his prick’s at attention.
    Fifo’s troops open fire, killing Casal and seriously damaging Avellaneda’s dinghy—she loses her oars.
    A VELLANEDA :
Oh, dear, my boat is shipping water! Help!
O Cepeda, O Fonseca, O dear Gabriel,
O Quintana, O Zorrilla,
O Camilo José Cela,
quick—launch the Coast Guard’s best flotilla!
Sound the alarm! Two-whee! Too-whoo!
Hurry, my brothers! To the rescue!
    While Avellaneda barely manages to stay afloat, in K EY W EST a heated argument breaks out about the numbers in a survey that a big U.S. company has taken in an attempt to assess Fifo’s popularity, which scholars claim is on the rise.
    A M AYOR :
The press, on good authority, has said
that Fifo’s brought back from the dead
all