Classic Poem

I too, once, Emilio Brentani …
Even to the walk—the nonchalant swing
bannered with bright hair—even
to the “thin red curve of her mouth outlined
against bright teeth …” Why is it
the likes of her drop their sunshades
for the likes of us to retrieve? Why
do they listen, downcast,
to our love and confess their own,
and flinch as if struck if we say
“I must leave early,” and all the while
be betraying or prepared to betray?

No answer from you, Emilio.
The best you could do was yell
“Whore!” and throw a stone after.
But I can imagine Ange
at eighty, “a smoke-dried stick”,
toothless in Trieste, croaking,
with a justice that cracks my heart:

“Did he own the sea, that he swam in it?
Or the sun and moon that they shined on him?
And I was more beautiful than all of them
in my day!”











By permission of the author.