Roma
READ ONLY MEMORY AGAIN
the wakeup phone anticipated, watching third floor the crowd weave
when will the Italians (read, Europeans) ever
perfect the shower nozzle?
tiny hotel soap pops from the wax wrap to the tiles
let alone the tap, a great dial off a ship’s
bridge
nonetheless unconscious harmonies subside, the blur dream goes down the
cracks
blue squares inside white some broken, the
water under surface sound
at windows, in place again, the old forms of the world
a puff of Tuscany stings and softens, a
deodorant smooths mysteriously
reassurances against a multitude of noses cleaving their censorious
daily expectations
footloose in Padua then dragged through Arezzo
backwards, we are here
one day in a million or this time around or both
dumb facts of marble glossy underfoot waken
cranial memories of home
in this mountain city, the mountains brought to the river plain
home is wherever we stand? is where foot arch
fits, spreads?
outside the early roar asks no questions, this is the centre
papers report suicide increase, a fact of life
here like encyclicals
but birds waddle on shelves of stone like there’s no tomorrow
high tail and down pour and crumb chase and
wing shutter
downstairs over acrid orange juice we learn who else is staying
shy Copenhagens, a prepossessing Lyonnais,
motormouth Chicago couples, the artful Londoner
what on Earth was really going on then, we ask ourselves
before we know, the perimeter sky lifts up its
oval breadth
the whole stadium before our tootsies comes late in the story
tend to forget, but we all forget in our
voracity, vivacity
a
pulley system is hoisting a wheelbarrow to a vacant doorway
in the highest deck of dreck, repairs continue year
after year
though how far we go with a ruin is another matter
is it anymore a ruin or a reconstituted relic?
resurrected wreck?
power being the simple answer, power was expression and expressed
casualties
imagine Grand Final crowds yelling for the
thrill of more blood
lions being gutted, leopard gore soiling the fresh sand, elephants
terrified
dark continents it took their minds centuries
to contend with, uselessly
we take photos for American students standing with their thumbs down
Michigan State, Harvard or Yale, Notre Dame
they’re all the same
convinced of a secret an imperium can bestow in its own
the crumblies of Vespasian don’t change, only
our theories about them
like, this was the funnel for World Beater’s own tortured failures
this was the real Fall, never a way forward or
back
people are amazing, everyone else talking to the cat, sunning himself
across brickwork he stretches on his serpentine
back to four corners
that woman in purple goes and pokes him with her umbrella
why would someone do that, just so, in front of
everybody?
you say your annoyance, her meanness, its gratuitousness, then we
circumnavigate
nimbly traipse over rocky Bay 13 the hirsute
heavies left behind
outside, two centurions open a hansom for dodgy doges in time-freeze
if once you say you don’t belong you feel you
do
a
bag lady arrives with her box of Whiskas and offcuts
cats fixate, they pick their way through mint
and millennial paving
giving being a means to life, like taking, like hunting down
while Vespas’ whiney circuits charm us back to
the postwar renaissance
on a clammy wall at Colosseo Metro posters pasted fullscale oxidise
omaggio a Balthus
Accademia Valentino Piazza Mignanelli 23, nymphet with cat
missing are the cushiony accordions of Paris, London’s rastas busking
reggae
humidity increases, accretion, grime awaits the
next hose down, blood sample
“I got me some horses to ride on, to ride on …”
you sing Tori Amos, “they say your demons …,”
on Ottaviani underground
split level sixties sleazy low water dribbling from the concrete rivets
“can’t go there, so I got me some horses to
ride …”
we review how locals maintain perfect interiors and perfect-issimi dress
sense
underground faces the world over, same
expressionless heads bent or turned
staring at the blasted rock, will they come back to light?
waiting for a hand, Virgil’s, to lead them from
infernal thoughts
up the escalator of hope, through the turnstile of redemption, uscita
eating, smoking, begging, all vietato on
Spanish Steps these days, Frenchkissing?
a
big red line through everything, like a Picasso sexual pun
fearful to sit down and get the white-belt
police making gestures
we notice how lazy Lazios leave exteriors to fend for themselves
we swear off visiting the Vatican
money-changers and their exorbitant rates
fluoro white fingers restored, the man who never knew a woman
at the Exchange you rearrange your midriff and
come up trumps
we chuckle at the lines of lire zeroes, like self-made millionaires
rows of mouths laughing at the theatre starring
umpteen arlecchino republics
analysis and appraisal ends up with the same colonnades, doing U-ies
Pincio ascended, we crunch over carrara gravel,
buckled cans, gooey condoms
dead summer’s impressions, bone pavement, broken limestone (click) the pine shadows
chestnuts fill the gutters, rain has passed but
everything still gleams
teenagers’ graven text(a)s left on heads of civilization, networking
their sigla
you collect passing forms in a camera to recall
pinnacles, crests
potential limitations (click) tackled by giant earthworks to mend privet
paths
dreamily we order coffee and almond cakes in
the glass pavilion
level of interest plateaus, always something impossibly original through
the trees
midmorning conversation’s the best, emperors
and junkies and waiters and pontiffs
plenty of time, with no conjunctions, for friends’ amours, co-workers’
concatenations
marchesa Iris Origo (my book) and Nuala Ni
Dhomnaill (your book)
doubts went on under those white domes you wouldn’t read about
remuneration was a house, the woods, the sky,
exile from feeling
while the skullcap of St Peter’s contains circuitry engaged in
self-affirmation
conclusion is orange walls, peeling cones,
flounced grass where lovers hid
Roma? aroma, rumour, Room A, rheum, trauma, vrooma-vrooma, rammer,
rhymer, reams
every day’s a good day to be born, said John
twenty-three
every day’s a good day to die, or just have coffee
coming down via Veneto, at handbag shop number
8 you finally choose
humming, but at least it’s not Torrid Aimless, of course Björk
this leather jacket is just the ticket, hidden
pockets, foldaway studs
on mezzanine railings geraniums are sprayed by a smiling hotel porter
we stop at un bar, the buzzing ceiling
harbour to passions
mozzarella
carozza, the sweet egg, the bitter crust, the ripe filling
come all this way to learn perfection’s no
substitute for simplicity
hard to believe a world food summit’s on in this city
till inevitably bookshops, the decline and fall
of the roaming inspired
and what’s this? Joyce’s Ulisse (“…voglio Sì”), darned
Miss Emily’s compacts
Io non sono nessuno! Tu chi sei? Anche tu – sei
– nessuno?
spend the plastic on Leopardi the friendless hunchback, Zanzotto’s zizzy
semantics
then we happen upon Piazza Mignanelli and elect
to go upstairs
you wonder why the mirror is held up to her face
what does she see? the mirror is not held
toward us
nor do we see her reflection bending away in lovely extreme
Tiber temptresses spend more time at the
register browsing expensive art books
like Piero della Francesca’s formal arrangement where something’s about
to happen
or has happened, like his graces who read in
chairs, the secret?
Rousseau is there, forceful naïveté that is adult escapism, events
eluded
the drawings we like emphatically the least,
thank you, shadows only
the hand is there but this is not Degas, Géricault
after the overview we are back with the main
ten paintings
what is this thing anyway with nubile girls stretched on couches?
watched by a feline ready to play, there for
the symmetry
celestial summers when far off intemperate cicadas suggest lovemaking
through siesta
or simply a page turning, the scratch of a
conté pencil
absorbed in that silence found in Esquilino after locking three doors
summertime, or autumn in the alps after the
snowline and before
we
gazed for hours through the first snows, descending to Padua
indoors, but here domesticity is put to the
test, secrets upended
dregs, when the bottle is lain sideways, go to the head
the Ancients said what was sacred and profane,
not the same
peace under the grape trellis, lust that turns humans into animals
somewhere, most vulnerable place of submission,
the sofa in the afternoon
the profound earhole, the twitchy nostril, the infinite eyesocket,
eating sensuousness
so far so good insofar as good is soh fah ti
a
dreamer’s beginning, a child’s escape and recollection, trained for life
everything you said dear person, the train
through Arezzo and before
how would it sound put on its back and remarked upon?
legs of the couch hold up the whole body of
experience
then we were in Emerald one gloomy winter, a red maple
or reclined on the back seat laughing over the
family foibles
in French, the divan: divine divider, diviner of dividends, devious
design
these nubiles by contrast are given a moment of
intimate knowing
if either of us said what they knew, it’s our secret
us looking, not that there’s anywhere to sit in
this gallery
jelly legs before pictures of enigmas supine with book or mirror
you wanting to go while daylight still hangs on
Flaminio trees
stepping into the stream of traffic once, we step out wiser
being here with you makes it different, now is
the moment
we “set the wine down amongst the living”, quoting the line
amatriciana makes us
homesick for Lygon or a quiet casalinga meal
warm olives, beads of onion, bucatini, the tastebuds luxuriating
in chianti
you will never cross Roman streets again, you
protest vainly, while
for me it’s hilarious how everyone must stop in a whirlpool
you are full now of the other world, friends,
family postcards
jotting you sing Frozen Orange Juice with the words all wrong
have we trodden the proper Jamesian path? it
would seem not
privately a pigeon walks like a bishop across the pockmarked portico
you observe how it bows reverently to a grain
of wheat
this version of Frozen Orange Juice is better than the original
at the dark apex of Piazza Navona clouds are
black forest
the clear half of sky shines with half a moon
fountain contortions of time hardly register
with gelati slurpers, humbly preoccupied
tomorrow the extended day of days and nights of time zones
you, who know your Latin better than I, simply
enjoy nonverbally
red lights flashing at Kuala Lumpur, exercising ankles in transit
lounges
there is no hurry, the tesserae tell us
bodies are warmer
solidly doors fold into grooves, shutters fit shut into one another
luminous Palladian frontispieces, scrubbed
whiter than the moon with laser technology
to keep on gazing as if it were saying, these facts
why do they become memory? one day we may
complain, strain
to remember, plead for these fresh facts to come to us
fresh as now, where sway of bodies around
bodies is home
the day will finish when it is finished, take your time
this year’s colour is orange, camicia,
scarpe, I mean bright orange
our self-appointed guide called this Hadrian’s quarter, smiled at my
Italian
it only made him talk the more, of Hadrian the
fortress
Hadrian the godsend, before his cashmere presence vanished up an alley
they were greedy for possession, generations
constructing marble memories of snowlines
but for us, autumn beauty of figures crossing the long square
in the clanky lift we kiss again, princes of
infinite space
remainders scanned, one page of each but nought catches fire, rest
capillaries aglow in the slumberous slow down,
nerves retracting their sun grip
nineteenth November nineteen ninety-six, what was and what we have seen
solenne e paffuto
means solemn and overweight, not stately and plump
there’s calcio, movie dubs, carpet ads, forty stations, nothing
to watch
Richard Gere sounds like Marcello Mastroianni
and Jodie Foster, Ornella Muti
every day might be like this, this alone the one day
domani, first train start,
the Smart world of thoughtless airport couches
buy Colosseum tee-shirts to change into mid-flight, sweat glands
constantly adapting
over millions of rooftops that will never know
these area codes
tonight wind pulls the cloudy black trees, paper slips and cavorts
gone to bed the birds, their mania retraced by
acrobatic leaves
the old churches, Maria Maggiore, are cold and black as mountains
a line of moonlight on their pediments could be
first snow
inside the hotel, you might say you’ve done this all before
designer couch like a medieval throne, best for
shelving distended Joyce
but this only makes Sevenhill more familiar,
more impervious, more impossible
if you say you do belong you suddenly feel you
don’t
it’s our world that’s safe that includes Rome on the itinerary
you are in your world of sprinkling and puffing
and coathangering
we embrace, I kiss your temple, the mulberry silk of Padua
immersed in zen time you set the wakeup figure
for domani
naked I stand in the dark, watching trees half an hour
unworldly orange halogen beams let me analyse
every steady turning leaf
[This poem is one in a continuing series using
as the prime origin of inspiration towns and cities of Italy. Other of these
poems have been published in Scripsi, Meanjin, and other Australian literary
journals.]
