Perfidia
You don’t know who these people are, or what
They’ll do to you if you’re caught, but you can’t
Back out now: it seems you agreed to carry
A briefcase into Germany, and here you are,
Glass in hand, as instructed. You rise to dance
With the woman with the garnet earrings, who is,
Of course, the agent you’re supposed to seduce
And betray within the hour. Who would have known
You’d fall in love with her? Elsewhere the day
Is as gray as a newsreel, full of stripes and dots
Of rain, a blurred windshield picture of Pittsburgh,
But on the screen where your real life is happening
It is always 1938, you are always dancing
With the same blonde woman with the bloodshot eyes
Who slips the forged passport into your pocket
And says she knows you’ve been sent to betray her,
Or else it is seventy degrees and holding
In California, where you see yourself emerge unscathed
From the car crash that wiped out your memory,
Your past, as you walk into a gambler’s hangout
On Sunset Boulevard, in a suit one size too large
And the piano player plays “Perfidia” in your honor,
And the redhead at the bar lets you buy her a drink.
– David Lehman. From Operation Memory (1990).
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Author: The Best American Poetry
