Romance of the Rails

Romance of the Rails

From departure from Bologna

many things to I remember.

Clouds were pouring down the mountains

like an avalanche of snow

rain was falling on the city

as the train was speeding southward;

I was plagued by memories

of distant troubles, long ago.

Banks of memory furled around me,

curses awfuler than imagined,

I lost all hope of forgetting

grand disasters, long ago.

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How lightly and how prettily they touch upon our little lives,

like dandelion seeds on grass, like Eos’ toes on empty air!

They float along and laugh with us, they call us by our old nicknames,

they twinkle, beg a cigarette, and tease us. We don’t realize--

though well we know they’re light and bright, and insubstantial as a breeze--

how brief their life, how thin their breadth, and just as quickly as they came,

they vanish. In what emptiness comes subsequent, we blink back tears

and snatch at shadows, grasping only pain, bereavement and despair.

Dinner Out, the Dropped Glass

Dinner Out, the Dropped Glass

So when the shatter sang around the room

and every head was turned, and all the din

receded just a moment, I was shocked

that such a potent silence should arise

from something so mundane as breaking glass--

or was it just the tension in the room,

a common breath we took, and which dispersed

as soon as we had seen the danger past?

That night we all had delicate desires

so lightly balanced, that we feared to smash.

Second Thought

Second Thought

It was the smile that drew her in,

that fiery charm and easy grace,

that Caravaggio’s Cupid’s grin,

that Praxiteles’ Hermes’ face.

His flat, he said, was well within

the river’s view, a pleasant place.

But was it worth waking up in?

And she grew quieter a trace.

So as she stirs her deep vermouth

she meditates on darker themes:

the foolish bargains made in youth,

the cow exchanged for magic beans.

What talisman would she find in hand,

should she wake up a one-night-stand?