Visit


I went to see her,
she was living in Sicily
(if it can be called living).


She would wake up in the late afternoon


and reach for the empty bottle.


“Iacio!” Broken glass filled
her sandstone portico
(every morning I swept her shards).


“Water”, “Aqua”, “Voda”, “Mizu”, “Uisge”,
I learned many words for the stuff
she would chug a litter of 
then spew up half.


Down steps of rusted iron, hand rails cut from the cliff,
down to see the sun goodbye
and bathe wrinkled skin in Mediterranean sea.
Gurgle, brush with brine.


On the warm evenings she would stay
near the firepit and slowly smoke,
smokes spiced with cloves, weed, other things;
whispering with the fire,
“Agni enfuego” (priest and martyr).
she loved smelling garlic burning
but ate it raw.


Otherwise, a towel and hot bath
followed by curry cabbage soup,
or black rice with lentils,
or the vegetarian fare of the season.
Profane meat was eaten
under-cooked every lunar month,
a practice she knew was habit
but the repetition of slaughter
reminded her of slaughter.


I'm not, nor wasn't, a wide-eyed
acolyte, it was the second glass
of chianti that brought me there,
“Youth is a beast of fain oaths”,
“The Gods live alone”, it would go on
these phrases, her Sibyl sayings.


What is this old croon?
She refused to speak to me.


At night, where she lived,
there were no mirrors in the house.


She never said she was bored,
I sometimes was, but I am often bored,
(boring I'm told), it would bother me more
but I like it, like a guilty prisoner 
serving penance.


She wasn't famous, not anymore,
she had been successful, had wealth to waste,
from translating the Latins, the Greeks,
she rarely spoke of the Greeks,
called them superficial
but I didn't believe her,
nor did I argue,
I don't think she believed herself.
It is the way of words, saying them,
like trying on outfits, finding if they suit you,
you or the occasion or anyone who's there
to notice.


“Piazza, ice cream.”
She meant chocolate
from Modica. Under pentice
I would smoke while it drizzled
deciding if I could leave
or if I could return to her. 


Every night she threw out the contents
of the fridge it was my task to restock
like the invisible servant of Psyche
(Where was Apollo? Divorced, living alone
watching reality TV and reading cereal boxes.
I heard he never leaves his crumbling 
Upper East Side penthouse, a delivery boy
brings him the list he leaves once a week).


Yeah, lonely people, forgotten Gods,
dismissed, derided, they didn't care
that was the trick, it sounds simple
and it's like my boredom, I don't care
If I'm bored or boring:
meaning, matter, significance
like pants which fall down without a belt
we make them fit.


She loved the beauty of sound
above all. It was sense, sense
before meaning, when done well
artfully, god like, translating
had broken her, bruised her heart
whimpered the brain, tossed the spirit
in the garbage can. She believed
this deeply but the world goes by
and she didn't care, so she said,
but really, can anyone say this
and have it fit without a belt? 
I thought she could when I found her 
living in the dark, demanding the trivial, and laughing
and crying and laughing at the bottom
of wine bottles, espresso cups,
mason jars of whiskey, empty boxes
for gloves, of grinders,
laughing at the empty bottom of it all,
she cared more than most.