The Ballad of Perry Smith
At 1:19 in the morning of Wednesday
the 14th of April 1965
Perry Smith the little one “another Toulouse Lautrec”
overdeveloped torso supported
on two dwarfish legs
bandy as a cowboy’s or a sailor’s
is declared legally dead.
After almost 2,000 days of solitary confinement
in the “rake of death”
The thing in itself did not last long. “Exactly” 19 minutes
They lowered him like a flag
with the two pale laces of his neck-tie hitched round the beam
of the “warehouse” as the prisoners called it
and a black bandage over his forehead
so that no one could see his grimace of agony
– a society sends its formal representatives
to this ritual of vengeance
in which the scoundrel “the evil one” jumps as from a diving board
with a rope around his neck
but once totally dead
he already looked new and innocent
The boy however was a “tough guy”
It was his trade
A whole family murdered with virtuosity
to prove himself
to show his “ability” to Dick
Truman Capote gives his detailed account in 400 pages
from which we know
what Dick thought later: that in that pastime
Perry was acting as if in a dream
opening heads as the most normal thing
always moving on and always unseeing
even though the night was a blessing it was so clear . . .
And then playing and playing his guitar and stupefying himself
he who has read In cold blood knows the different moments
of that nightmarish truth
when the guilty one explains himself to the point of redemption and fame
The writer didn’t even want to exaggerate the tension:
travel ravings dinners of roast beef and mashed potatoes
dreaming of warm islands
buried gold gaudy shirts
and Cadillacs the colour of fire
like those driven by gangsters
Get-rich-quick-team-practising-
full-lung-immersion for free
Submersion in cold blue seas
to “get hold” of sunken treasures . . .
Goddam!
He had the impression that Dick doubted his marvellous ideas
and he strove to make him believe they were really good
marvellous ideas
but the snag was you always had to be on the move
going to the West to Nevada or Texas
or no place in particular
prowling around in sheds and writing dud cheques
as a means of getting supplies
and the truth was he was up to his arse in all that shit
even though those feelings had to be disguised
in front of Dick nonchanantly smoking Marlboros at the wheel
Perry left all his possessions to Capote
song books and two boxes of letters
The boy knew that one day he would be in books
despite his humiliating life and miserable childhood
he aspired to “refinement”
and he had that weakness of the riffraff
for high-sounding words
But there was a second thing about him
he sang
and singing – as is known – is sometimes very helpful
Capote classified him as the type “with the aura of an exiled animal”
brought up
among jabs and shoves in so brutal a manner
that the dark wet eyes craved vengeance
and vengeance made an appointment with him
in that nice white sixteen-room house
that stood on a beautiful and well-kept lawn
This is the end of the story:
the Clutters rest in the Valley View cemetery
in Garden City
where respectable people sleep
As for Perry
the writer paid for a gravestone in the prison cemetery
where criminals sleep
out of professional conscience and friendship scruples
What I say is this
restoring to the man what I have lived of his life
and let everyone be the judge:
the yellow bird – the bird of his dreams –
may it not have taken Perry Smith to the highest tree in Paradise?
