XLVI. PHOTOGRAPHS: # 1748
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It is a photograph he never took, no one here took it.
Geryon is standing beside the bed in his overcoat watching Ancash struggle awake.
He has the tape recorder in hand.
When he sees Ancash’s eyes open he says, How long are the batteries good for?
About three hours, Ancash answers
sleepily from the pillow. Why? What are you up to? What time is it anyway?
About four-thirty, says Geryon, go back to sleep.
Ancash mumbles a word and slides back under his dream. Want to give you
something to remember me by,
whispers Geryon closing the door. He has not flown for years but why not
be a
black speck raking its way toward the crater of Icchantikas on icy possibles,
why not rotate
the inhuman Andes at a personal angle and retreat when it spins—if it does
and if not, win
bolts of wind like slaps of wood and the bitter red drumming of wing muscle on air—
he flicks Record.
This is for Ancash, he calls to the earth diminishing below. This is a memory of our
beauty. He peers down
at the earth heart of Icchantikas dumping all its photons out her ancient eye and he
smiles for
the camera: “The Only Secret People Keep.”