The Roman Poems

 

1: Went in the rain through the streets of Rome

                                               according to no plan.

Came by way of the Veneto to a garden park of pine.

Knew illicit favours, the whispered coos

Of conspiracy and sex. Then air more ancient: Orpheus.

The squall passed. The sun shone,

Lemons bright on the trees.

 

And you hailed the god who brushed by your lips,

His snub this: 'You unconsecrated piece of work,

This territory's mine. Your realm?

Try Cleveland.'

 

 

2: Women notice, eye you, approve,

You stone satyr come to life.

Clusters of grapes hang from your ears,

The scent of jasmine heavy in the air.

Careful though or you'll soon be stuck

With horns more splendid than the knobs

You sport now. Yes, what paint thinner could strip

The happy grimace from your mouth?

Who'll believe it's not about sex,

Your heart all Roman piousness,

Stalinist oblivion, Christian grace?

 

 

3: What if, in the soul there are

Deeper tragedies than we know

Exceeding love lost, greater than the Fall?

Yes, but what do they say, the perfumed girls?

The girls in their bright leggings on the Corso -

What does their laughter say?

'Fabrizio? Buffone.'

 

 

4: So rapacious you'd even dismantle

The scaffolding's intimacy with its church,

Sacker of Rome, you not only ravish

Cupolas and architraves, thugs of alabaster,

Things of Caravaggio and Bernini

And fountains dolphin-busy

With your covetous eyes,

Now you harvest American newspapers

For tax fraud and homicide

-here on a market day

    in the Campo de Fiore.

 

 

5: Through a grove of ilexes you traipsed

As though in search of debauchery.

The little white dog scampered ahead,

Sniffing every twig and rock and knapsack.

Did you expect to meet with nymphs

And drunken satyrs in a shade?

Goblet in hand, Caesar's daughter

Debunking the verses of the day?

Would you get gemütlich, you barbarian you,

And Watteau paint the scene?

The news all bomb blast, the dog

Kept romping about with wagging tail,

Mothers whispering to infants,

Boys kicking soccer balls.

Deep in the afternoon.

Birds piping in the pines.

Every sweet illusion true.

But something as deadly as a smile

Still danced beyond your reach.

It drew you through light and shadow

In the balm of a warm wind.

And everything might perish

And the laughter last forever.

Jolly mutt, white bit of fluff,

Alertly pricking up his ears,

Roman to the core, knew what you meant.

 

 

6: The perfumed air was unexpected,

Time above and below you deep.

The chalk green pool of the virgins held

The sky, would mirror roses soon,

And here amidst the forum's ruins,

American infinitude might cede

Pride of place-No such luck.

For sleek Pentecostals, armies of them,

Filed past the markets and the gods.

Unpacked cameras, heard out the guides.

The Idaho girls compared tattoos

With Connecticut counterparts,

Cold to all hegemonies but their own.

Dread is not so much fear as it is conviction

That the worst lies ahead of us, still,

The Palatine steaming from the rain,

Washington deadpan with its spin.

 

 

7: She sang as though music could die in a moment

And her angry eyes would not save the day.

Perhaps some letter had mentioned love.

Perhaps no song redeems a world ill-made.

Yet things happen in the cotillion

We are pleased to call time and space.

That earth and moon dance together.

That put to fire, letters curl, flake, disintegrate.

But must narrative pursue a paradox

And a woman's professionally jeering lips

Assail the pointlessness of heaven

Shimmering with its laws?

Her eyes hostages within black circles,

The entreaties in them nervous flames,

No rockandroll diva but a Roman chanteuse,

She must've known her song would fail as quickly

As the news of her death would stun the world.

Perhaps some letter had mentioned this.

If you, traveler, should come across

A shiny new tomb somewhere,

One tasteless in the extreme,

Have a look. It might be her.

 

 

8: The rain came down in sheets.

Swallows swooped and climbed.

They scissored through the torrent

Like creatures immune to time.

A woman with garden shears

Madly snipped at garden flowers.

Madly, tulips fell.

 

And workmen's hammers pounded.

Drillbits chewed through stone.

Was the rain ever going to end?

Was there such a thing as silent Rome?

A boy once said to a lonely girl,

His words at least half sincere,

'The world never changes: it's what it is,

You the sweetness at the core.'

 

Well, perhaps the rain would end

And workmen lay their hammers down

And silence come and stay awhile

And a woman put away her giddy state

And reinstate the fallen tulips.

And I, slightly wiser or somewhat more gifted

Than a boy without an ounce of wit,

Might catch a break in this world

Of women punishing it.

 

 

9: And just when you through an act of will

Return yourself to the workaday world

Of profit and loss, of frustrated traffic, drivers endeavouring

          to score

Last word, last gesture (fifteen delivery vans at an impasse),

A glance through this gate or down that street,

A glimpse of garden or marble god

Yanks you and your venerable soul

From the ring of the quotidian - in you go again,

                                                           yes, once more

Into the breach where duty lies, to take

The brunt of Beauty's tyrannical demands.

Then you enter a bar to shake off

These antique realms, hear dragged-out vowels. American.

You can't win. And some remote valley in Sardinia now

Looks better, homicidal shepherds and all.

Surely, you told those women much maligned

Who thought they knew for what they bargained,

Who were a day's work for slap-happy thieves,

Sweaty, unattractive, bored, fatigued,

That you'd relieve them of their pilgrimage?

That they left behind their true desire, leaving

Cleveland? You mean you didn't? In this you failed

And you call yourself a gentleman.

 

 

10: You cut a poor figure in their eyes.

How absurd to think the pose you strike

Fills the air with truth, you creature, still, of schoolboy ideals

As though Americans don't haze prisoners

And squeeze the world for oil.

'If you're so smart,' they seem to ask

From behind the newspapers that they peruse,

'Where's the car, the golden girl,

The Fortune 500 company?'

Where are immortal life and endless pleasure?'

Allah owns the latter, so say some.

The weather? Been fickle in Rome.

 

 

11: 'Muse, do you recall Virgil and Lucan?

The one had faith and the other none.

One brought a grand poem into play,

Made Aeneas Roman. The other, rabid,

Pissed on the glory, Rome an evil to him.

It's nearly that now, whether it's best to choose -

With burned-out ardor - a tired redemption,

Or, frothing at the mouth, get vicious and bury

The U.S. of A. in its swamp of sacrilege.

Muse, remember me, the one meek as a lamb,

Whose voice is dream-like to himself,

Whose voice is like those of ghosts and wailing women,

Who only wonders if it carries

Even a trace of conviction?'

 

 

12: What brings it, the memories that come in whispers,

Like waves that swallow waves?

Even as they seem to diminish a man,

A man seems to grow larger, still,

More enormous than imperial consequence,

More huge than his catastrophic loves.

A man stands at the base of three tall columns,

Saturn's old temple where once a year

Men played at dice, one another's equals.

A man looks up, and the swirling sky

Is ominous with the lost Golden Age,

And vertigo, perhaps, pressurizes him,

His eyes now those of a marbled avenger.

The Year of the Four Emperors, indeed.

Was Rome mad only at the top?

What adventures in the palaces.

In the streets what mayhem.

 

 

13: In Rome the blossoms thicken

The air with cloying scent

And lizards, grey and wary, sleep

Between ancient, marble slabs.

The swallows are back.

'But it's the pines,' a woman says, 'the pines that make the

         scene,'

In thrall to the view from the Janiculum.

'It's the pines, the pines, the pines-'

And her husband nods his agreement,

In thrall to her heartfelt enthusiasm.

There are tricks and there are tricks

That make of history theatre.

Some panoramas will seduce the eye

Or freeze it in horror:

That TV footage you saw at dawn

Of Italians held hostage in Iraq.

The captive's bloody hood, the captor's recoiling pistol there,

The pinetrees, the roses,

Some terrace's bright oranges here.

Well, the couple are getting their money's worth,

Arms draped around one another - it's a tryst.

It's such deep-woven fabric, and John

Must lay his head on the bosom of Christ

Before heaven will shine with something else.

 

14: Even Rome couldn't duck its coming:

The boom-child and what attends it.

By all means, escape and picnic,

Sit yourself down by the willow,

The sun spreading pools on the river,

A woman squatting with tissue paper

Behind a bush on the opposite bank.

As the cormorants dive and surface

And dive again and reappear to applause

And the wine rushes to your head,

Allow yourself this idle reflection:

If faith is all we get of God,

A man pitching his voice at the sun-obscured stars above

Must be in excess of a private creed.

Well, the eyes of the dog come to sniff you over

Are surely eternal, as eternal as the town's reputation,

Rome still half in love with Nero,

You yourself now almost mellow,

Time unfolding as it always has.

 

 

15: They have at one time or another

Made farce out of what is theirs alone.

What to do when it gets old hat, no room in you left

For yet another unscheduled epiphany?

When it wears thin - the scarecrow whore,

The Pantheon dark in a thundery squall?

Announce you're moving to Yellowknife,

Cristiano will beg you to bring him along.

Still, time to step out and see what boots it -

The big, fat roses, lush air, corruptions,

The toothless waiter, chain-smoking commie,

The scaffolded villas, preening ducks,

The lacy hosiery, lazy fountains.

Sit in the breeze on the Pincio and number

And happily give up numbering all

The bloated appeals for the decencies

Which will be yours when you're home again.

 

 

16: A world glib and graceless?

It's as much to your liking as it is to ours.

We thank you for your honesty.

Gut-busting burgers, greasy fries,

Women whose idea of love

Is a poke, a beer and television - 

You had it so and didn't  cringe.

So what's this, you lurking here,

Walking through the groves of pine?

Ah, resolute one, you're only stubborn.

And then to say you love the place -

Ill-advised. Shush or you'll antagonize,

And the soul of it all, bird-like, flit away.

Even so, soldiering on, you serve notice,

If only to hear yourself in committed speech,

That you take things for what they are,

Nothing more, nothing less:

A villa's simple absolutes,

A torso lighter than it was,

Missing limbs and head.

 

 

17: She sings, her eyelids heavy,

Her long, black coat spread wide behind her

On the stone and in this heat.

You've seen her somewhere perhaps.

In a Piero della Franscesca, the painter

Thought provincial and behind his time.

She doesn't do it for the money, you say,

She squeezing that accordian, making it ripple.

Tell us another.

 

And roses bloom - there's a sun in the sky.

Waiters bear trays - carabinieri cradle weapons.

The trams sail by on their allotted tracks,

Suburban Romans in spiritual transition.

 

And Rome the Eternal City spits and roars and mocks

As the woman sings and plays, 

Offering up her chestnuts.

Oh there's room. There's room in the chatter,

                       in the cacophony of rude horns.

There's room for every suicidal mission, room for her

          and every simpleton like you.

And when you shove deep and reach for the coin,

And it's as though, all this while, you've been strung along,

She puts out her hand with such generosity

It would seem she's doing you the favour.

Immense dignity.

Captivating smile.

 

 

18: The balding man, his plump sweetheart perform

Their daily ritual at her door. The kiss goodbye. Long

        lingering.

Each morning at nine, you come across them at this,

You headed for the Ugo Bassi stairs

In all your innocence, which is to say

You purged such grotesqueries from your life.

You spot them puckering - you lower your eyes.

You scare the same lizard - it darts back in its same hole.

Rome now at your feet, Rome is camouflage

For unbelief. You can't believe them:

The lovers, their slithering long-tailed witness,

Then the stone madonna further down the hill.

At any moment, the colisseum itself,

The slaughters there long extinct,

Could start giving tongue to its peculiar gods

And its red sand start seeping blood.

Ah, the place. Purling lark. Harsh raven.

What's to say? You can't even begin to fathom the life.

What troubles you troubles you all the more.

 

 

19: Here's what you might've done with that cloud

You believed you had palavers with

When it stalled over Constantine's Arch.

Directed it east by southeast roughly,

Toward the Euphrates more or less.

Said to it the food and drink are passable

Where old Nineveh thrived, where Baghdad is up for grabs.

But advised, 'Beware the internecine rivalries,

The special ops and throwers of knives

Who, more swiftly than you can shed

Your founding fathers, will convey

You to the after-life.'

 

As it is, even where you stand now, leaning against

                                                                an ancient wall,

And that's ivy reaching for your neck,

Take nothing for granted, not even the clear night sky.

For courteous demeanor, snuffling nose,

Rancid shirt, crumpled bowtie,

Belated celibacy, inconstant piety

Are, taken altogether, no security

From the loveliness of that moon

Hanging in the pines.

 

 

20: Deep, gold light suffuses things.

And a certain member of your body stirs.

A Roman sun warms your neck,

There on the Pincio, and you reflect:

Sure, the old religion went over the top

And had to die of its ungodly weight,

And science rules even as we speak,

But not now, not just yet.

 

 

21: Nino Manfredi the actor is dead

And women weep. It thunders over the Alban Hills

While, in the city, frenetic swallows

Re-inhabit an uncertain sky.

Cameras. Speeches. Lush bouquets.

The casket at the Campodoglio.

Still, it's wagered that, come the last farewell

To be granted in the Piazza del Populo,

Nino will get half the crowd that Sordi rated.

Elsewhere, D-Day rituals. Now, breaking news:

American president passed away,

Every American agog. Poor Nino.

In death, as in the movies, history stiffs him.

 

 

22: Rome did the poor few favours.

How many slaves saw their thirtieth year?

Fate was immutable, a done deal always

Though chance, on occasion, gladdened

The hearts of those climbing the ladder

To the highest part of the pyramid.

No way to spin this -

No way to sugar the fact

As you sweeten your coffee and stare,

Would spot the unseen but musical bird in the tree,

You with your tough, your sad, your withering eye.

That Plato, for all his symmetries, was uneasy,

The universe chockful of surprises.

Manipulate terms and vanquish limits,

Vote the right party and kiss the right arse

And the world will always seem to yawn

At its leisure, waking to the newly conjured:

Fickle intellect, indifferent sun.

 

 

23: Christ unimportant, as nothing to them,

The Romans killed Him without enthusiasm.

But what really gets you is the heat,

That and the dream-figure in your sleep.

Over and over, patient master, she teaches

All you could ever desire to know

Of fate and redemption and staying cool.

That her touch gives and her touch takes.

That her love is true and her love is false.

That you are everything to her and you hardly matter.

That you were never right and are never wrong.

That she brings the future and builds your tomb.

That she says 'Baghdad' and means 'Tehran'.

That, because she's a dream, she's not a book.

That she is often more afraid than you

Of a man's science, of a man's worst impulse.

Her smile? A riddle yet more precious, yours to appraise,

A necklace, as it were, a trinket to admire

Here in the pine's motionless shade.

 

 

24: Voices lilt across the stone.

Oleander in the air.

A bell rings out - another rings back,

'Why fret? God is in His heaven.'

A toothless beggar, fish-like, puckers.

A sparrow picks insects off a wall.

A Roman in jeans and cowboy boots

Would snap his fingers and change it all.

You're saying 'Goodbye', aren't you?

Goodbye to those brown feet in their white high heels.

To the poppies up on the Palatine.

To the dome of St Peter's.

To the hibiscus and the cirrus.

To the heat of the via Antica.

To the British accent of disdain.

To the waiter who, caring less

For the alarm in your soul, the farewell in your eyes,

Took your money with open palm

And marble stare.