A Poem from News of the World

News of the World
by Philip Levine

Once we were out of Barcelona the road climbed past small farm-
houses hunched down on the gray, chalky hillsides.  The last person
we saw was a girl in her late teens in a black dress & gray apron
carrying a chicken upside down by the claws.  She looked up &
smiled.  An hour later the land opened into enormous green mead-
ows.  At the frontier a cop asked in guttural Spanish almost as bad
as mine why were we going to Andorra.  "Tourism," I said.  Laugh-
ing, he waved us through.  The rock walls of the valley were so
abrupt the town was only a single street wide.  Blue plumes of
smoke ascended straight into the darkening sky.  The next morning
we found what we'd come for:  the perfect radio, French-made,
portable, lightweight, slightly garish with its colored dial &
chromed knobs, inexpensive.  "Because of the mountains, reception
is poor," the shop owner said, so he tuned in the local Communist
station beamed to Spain.  "Communist?" I said.  Oh yes, they'd
come twenty-five years ago to escape the Germans, & they'd stayed.
"Back then," he said, "we were all reds."  "And now?" I said.  Now
he could sell me anything I wanted.  "Anything?"  He nodded.  A
tall graying man, his face carved down to its essentials.  "A Cadil-
lac?" I said.  Yes, of course, he could get on the phone & have it out
front--he checked his pocket watch--by four in the afternoon.
"An American film star?"  One hand on his unshaved cheek, he
gazed upward at the dark beamed ceiling.  "That could take a week."