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.
