I saw him only once, in the smoke and the heat A small man who smiled like a man who might cheat He moved through Rick’s café as if he owned the air And carried two lives in the papers he wore They say he was Ugarte — a name I barely kept The kind the police collect when the night has no rest He sold what the desperate cannot live without A signature, a stamp, a way to get out I did not come for him I came for the letters For Victor, for freedom, for the war we still fight But every road out of this city Passed first through that little man’s hands They took him at morning while the fans still turned I heard it in whispers the refugees learned The letters survived him — they always survive The messenger falls and the paper stays live Rick looked at me then as if time had not passed As if Paris still lived in the glass that we glassed I asked for the names that Ugarte once sold And felt the old wound that the desert won’t hold I did not love the man I needed what he carried Two lines on a page that could open the night Casablanca keeps no one It only keeps the price So when they play the song and the room grows still I think of the weasel who paid for the bill A shadow in linen, a voice slightly high Who died so that someone might finally fly As time goes by, the letters remain Not his, never mine, only borrowed and signed I was the woman who asked for the door He was the man who had opened it first
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