Alps, island, jet, crest, logo-Barnum’s own
Chromos on luggage of the lives we led.
Contessa, in the Mercedes toward Chinchón,
Remember, the day of the bullfight, what you said?
When, ruffling back your curls’ mahogany gloss
(The cub reviewer enthused, “Pompeian torrents!”)
You showed me a cheek glass hail had marked, crisscross,
The night your Ferrari was crumpled north of Florence;
And, mocking yourself, emoted, “My career’!
My dreams of Vissi d’arte! Doomed? In ashes?”
As—I don’t think before or since—one tear
Glistened, a moment’s diamond, in your lashes,
Gleamed and was gone. Then lightly, “ “Cosa fatta….!
-Remember Dante? It’s true our blossoms blow
Away too early? Except forget-me-not. Ah,
Non ti scordar di me!”
The words we know!
The words we know, to cherish and forgive in,
Console us when their referents go wrong.
Afford, somehow, a sort of world to live in
(So leaden hours are alchemized in song).
Not words to post on luggage. Hardly posh there.
Your palm cajoled my right hand from the wheel,
Lay in it, easy.
Later, in the crush there,
We parked, sipped our anis—then bugles peal.
Curls—their autumnal luster!—veiled a cheek
Your finger questioned still; eyes twilight-blue
Mused on the crowd, the rough-and-tough, the chic
-Gina was there and, word went, Ava due
Down from Madrid. No bullring, so they made
A planked-in plaza of the village square,
Ramshackle stands that lurched as we ¡Olé!d;
Gazers from rooftop, window, everywhere
And often eyes on you, who’d known that town
From childhood, stranger from your Umbrian hill
At first, then friend to many up and down
Those streets, most every fall. And special still.
Nothing went wrong, that day, at the wild rites.
Nothing—that day. We’ve seen the manshape flung
Dark on the sky for all his suit of lights,
Or from the horn, an endless second, hung.
And we’ve seen more: death’s rubric on the sand
Beneath the sky’s wide innocence of blue.
But nothing that day. Still, I kept your hand,
Saw the half sucked-in smile, and knew you knew
Moments of truth too blinding to expect
Unless one wore the initial on her cheek,
His mark, the new possessor, who’d collect
His own in time. His time. We didn’t speak
Much in that numbing razzmatazz, that spree of
Dicey heroics. But my sidelong gaze
Felt a remoteness in your soul-as free of
Burdens, concerns bedeviling our days.
Remoteness? Hardly! Not by sol or sombra.
-Lightness, a buoyancy of hawsers cut
Is what I felt. More aureole than penumbra,
Much as you were, through all the days we
but
You nudged me, “Nearly over. Let’s be going.
Away from crowds.” Once through them, with head high,
You led to a glorieta—there, boughs blowing,
A flurry of poplar leaves from the loose sky
Hoo’d at us, hustled us, tourbillions pulling
This way and that …
then, withered,
… off in wind …
Leaves colorful as comics. Luggage peelings
Of island, alp, jet, logo-paper-thin.
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