Sabbatical
No one ever knows what comes next,
and I’ve seen how deluded we can be, bewildered,
apprehensive, squandering all our dreams
in sleep, but in those days I saw myself
as a figure in a diorama, as if
someone sat me down in a tiny wooden chair.
I’d lost a dear friend I couldn’t get over
so stayed in my hotel room or sat at the bar.
I knew I’d go missing if I lugged my life
around the corsos of Mezzegra
but I got lucky, stumbling on a celebration:
the anniversary of Mussolini’s hanging.
What we call history, it happened here.
Old men with walkers and canes
clinked shots of prosecco, a young waitress
served hors d’oeuvres, and from a balcony
a clown played a march on his trombone.
I’d been missing everything.
How long would it take
to find my own town, my own cafes
and cemeteries, monstrosities and joys,
where I could kneel and let those laments
course through me? Then what plagued me
for so long could sit beside me
while I drank, and sang in someone else’s tongue.
* * * * *
Genealogy
I.
Once I saw him
in the clouds. His face,
pale and puffy,
(from drinking I guess),
dispersing
with a gust of wind,
but alone for once,
so I could talk
to his scattered selves —
myself, that’s
who I’m talking to,
who I’ve always talked to.
II.
I was born
under the tutelage
of a woman
who never lived.
Our doors
shut, our shades
drawn: we only
let the dimness in.
She taught me how
to fear the fearful
world, to draw
from a well
the empty pail.
* * * * *
Allegory
Whatever it means to live in lightness,
whether it’s skimming a melody in a major key
or trimming the roses without thinking,
welcoming the finch and the daffodil
as dazzling enough or forgiving the past
for knowing no better, these remedies
were meant for those with sunlit porches
and abundant bank accounts. My scenarios
were shabby, fraught, replete with mistakes:
my moments of malevolence,
whole sentences I should never have spoken:
they plague me still. And couldn’t I have married
the right person once? Once I spent a week
in Tuscany, climbing the hills, drinking Brunellos
I couldn’t afford, but every night I lay awake
worrying how I’d survive my debts.
I spent a whole afternoon with a terrapin
as it dragged its thick limbs from a shaded thicket
to the beach, sunning itself in the remaining light
before it ducked into its shell to sleep.
Imagine that, the remaining light! Who’d forget
the lesson there? But we who linger
on grief and doubt, aren’t we the true believers,
if not in Christ then in the calamity of history?
Very excellent poems, methinks.