·
3 мин
Слушать

Those Graves In Rome

There are places where the eye can starve,

But not here.

Here, for example,

The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow

Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of

Tourists.

And here is the Protestant

Where Keats & Joseph Severn join

Forever under a little shawl of

And where Keats's name isn't even

His gravestone, because it is on Severn's,

And Joseph Severn's infant son is

Two modest, grassy steps behind them both.

But you'd have to know the story—how

Keats wanted the inscription to

Simple, & unbearable: "Here lies

Whose name is writ in water." On a warm day,

I stood here with my two oldest friends.

I thought, then, that the three of us would

Indissoluble at the end, & also

We would all die, of course.

And not die.

And maybe we should have joined hands at

Moment.

We didn't.

All we did was followA lame man in a rumpled suit who climbedA slight incline of graves blurring

The passing marble of other graves to

The vacant home of whatever is not

Of Shelley & Trelawney.

That walk uphill

Be hard if you can't walk.

At the top, the

Wheezed for breath; sweat beaded his face,

And his wife wore a look of concern

Habitual it seemed more like the

Our bodies, someday, will have to wear stone.

Later that night, the three of us strolled,

Our arms around each other, through the

Del Corso & toward the Piazza di

As each street grew quieter

Finally we heard nothing at the

Except the occasional scrape of our own steps,

And so said good-bye.

Among such friends,

Who never allowed anything, still alive,

To die,

I'd almost forgotten that

Most people leave behind them disappears.

Three days later, staying alone in a

Hotel in Naples,

I noticed a child's

Fingerprint on a bannister.

Had been indifferently preserved beneathA patina of varnish applied,

I guessed,

The last war.

It seemed I could almost

His shout, years later, on that street.

But

Is speculation, & no doubt the simplest

Could shame me.

Perhaps the child was

Calabria, & went back to it withA mother who failed to find work, &

The child died there, twenty years ago,

Of malaria.

It was so common then—The children crying to the doctors for quinine.

And to the tourists, who looked like doctors, for quinine.

It was so common you did not expect an aria,

And not much on a gravestone,

His name is on it, & weathered stone still

His name—not the way a girl might

The too large, faded blue workshirt ofA lover as she walks thoughtfully

The Via Fratelli to buy bread, shrimp,

And wine for the evening meal with candles &The laughter of her friends, & later the

Enkindling of desire; but something else,

Cut simply in stone by hand & meant to

Because of the way a name, any name,

Is empty.

And not empty.

And almost enough.

Anonymous submission.

0
0
42
Подарок

Larry Levis

Larry Patrick Levis (September 30, 1946 – May 8, 1996) was an American poet.
Комментарии
Вам нужно войти , чтобы оставить комментарий
Сегодня читают
Ryfma
Ryfma - это социальная сеть для публикации книг, стихов и прозы, для общения писателей и читателей. Публикуй стихи и прозу бесплатно.