Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ARRIVAL IN ROME, by JENNIFER GROTZ First Line: My head aches, and the stale air burns Subject(s): Absence; Love; Railroads; Rome, Italy; Solitude; Travel; Separation; Isolation; Railways; Trains; Loneliness; Journeys; Trips | ||||||||
I. My head aches, and the stale air burns my throat, pricks me into sweat and dream. The train rushes its heavy skeleton, shakes my head side to side in half-paralysis the nimbus state of half-sleepand when I open my eyes, feverish, near laughter, the blur of lights far offVenicecarnival with men in top hats, women dressed as harlequins or divas or fat, fuzzy bees. II. How impossible it is to be alone, not to be seen, impossible not to look, even in fever to give oneself up to not looking, to close the eyes for sleep in this paradox of stillness and movement, to be prone and yet hurtling through the dark that presses against the compartment's windows while a couple whispers in the aisle. To know there is always something beyond and to fear that one may never arrive. III. You appeared like a gargoyle floating in the corner of my room, beseeched "Sink not Lethe-ward!" By day my tongue stuttered French, grew proficient, never graceful. In France I was never beautiful. I rose on cold mornings, ate oatmeal cooked in my one pot, served in my one bowl eaten with my filched spoon. I would reflect the world. I promised myself I would find you, I would glow my uncertainty like the moon. IV. I let them fetch the dusty books of letters from the hidden stacks of the Sorbonne. Under windows letting in the city's dark I was one woman amid the hundred tables and lamps. All winter I read. You prayed like a heathen to your Venus star. The nightingale could sing even as it flew. I prayed to you. I can't explain why I thought you loved me too. "That which is creative must create itself." V. Darling, you have been my sweetest companion, and for many a time I have been in love with this in-between, volleyed back and forth, never able to know the now escaping like water moving through fingers. Now more than ever it seems impossible to unthink the lover's hot breath against the cheek, the ear, to brush one's face up against the now, close one's eyes and be carried off to bed. VI. Oh, to arrive in Rome! where you go to die and I to find you, to walk the streets with tourists and taxis, the lemony light off ivory buildings, to stare at Moses with his horns, at Apollo chasing Daphne as she twists into branches. All that moves will later freeze: the death mask of your face. I'll remember your letters, every word I can conjure: "The tears will come to your eyes. Let them." VII. Fog, first a little, then wind blowing it up and away those mornings I trudged through the gardens, past the big-bellied Balzac on Boulevard Raspail. You were nowhere. My breath billowed out in clouds of steam, unable to be controlled, almost embarrassing. The train cries out. It is nearly dawn. The fever breaks and takes you with it. You were with me, palpable. In the rattling, I am waiting to arrive. First published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 25 #3/4 Summer/Fall 2003. www.kenyonreview.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RICHARD, WHAT'S THAT NOISE? by RICHARD HOWARD LOOKING FOR THE GULF MOTEL by RICHARD BLANCO RIVERS INTO SEAS by LYNDA HULL DESTINATIONS by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE ONE WHO WAS DIFFERENT by RANDALL JARRELL THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH by DENIS JOHNSON SESTINA: TRAVEL NOTES by WELDON KEES TO H. B. (WITH A BOOK OF VERSE) by MAURICE BARING OCTAVES: 21 by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON |
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