I did say that this was the sixth MovieNight showing of John Huston’s Night of the Iguana, but to be honest, I’m not sure! It might have only been the fifth time. In any case, it was really gratifying to be able to screen my favorite movie one more time to a house full of appreciative viewers. It feels a bit like evangelizing!

For those of you who’d like to read it, here (once again, again) is “Nonno’s” beautiful, final poem:

How calmly does the olive branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair

Some time while light obscures the tree
The zenith of its life will be
Gone past forever
And from thence
A second history will commence

A chronicle no longer gold
A bargaining with mist and mold
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth, and then

An intercourse not well designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The earth’s obscene corrupting love

And still the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair

Oh courage! Could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me

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