GOLF AND CANADIAN LITERATURE

'Canadian literature drove me to this,' I said to my friend Lorca
as we sauntered down the fairway in search of my ball.


'Un raro gusto,' said he.


I was a mess. I had a cigarette hanging out the corner of my 
mouth, a shirttail hanging out the back of my pants and a raging 
headache sending darts across my eyes.


It's strange what cheap red wine will do. God, last night we 
drank gallons of it and Lorca read his poems and I tried to make 
head or tails of it -- Spanish is not my major language -- and 
so, while we were lighting cigarettes, I said: 'Tomorrow we will 
go to the golf course.'


So it was tomorrow morning and as I snooped around the rough for 
my ball,I could hear him whispering behind me: 'Verde que te 
quiero verde.'


He repeated it a few times verde te quiero verde until my white 
ball stood out like a beacon in the thick greening grass throwing 
off the pallid winter.


'Lorca, up there is where I have to put my ball. Up there where 
the flag is. Now the distance is such that I have to use my 
fairway wood -- that is the way these things go. Despite what 
anybody says fairway woods are fairly to hard master -- as a 
matter of fact, mastering a fairway wood is more difficult than 
mastering Canadian literature.'


With that bold statement, I stepped up with a three wood in my 
hands and concerned myself with the ball.


He laughed: 'La bolo como un immenso tulipan.'


The effort I made was prodigious; at the end of my swing the ball 
had advanced about four feet ten and one quarter inches.


From behind my Slumped Shoulders of Disappointment I heard Lorca 
say in clear English: 'I believe I understand.'