A poem forthcoming in How the Crimes Happened (CavanKerry, 2010). I think of this as my turnaround poem: my giant step into learning how to write. It's about one of my best friends, who died after I wrote it. It was published by the Puckerbrush Review, whose editor died after it appeared. I'm not blaming these events on the poem; however, you may still want to watch your step after reading it.

Dinner tonight: pork loin braised in milk, arborio rice, kale, carrot salad. Pork loin cooked in milk is one of the best foods ever and just shockingly unkosher.

Protestant Cemetery

   Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

 

Keats is dead, time’s swift apprentice

tramping the grimy London lanes,

pockets crammed with pencil stubs, two mice,

a half-penned letter of delight—“ah!

had I never known your kindness . . . ”

 

and Shelley is dead, one white hand

clutching a tinker-toy mast,

silk scarf flying, a torrent of curls

shock-whipped by wind, and the sea

tearing sheets from her bed;

 

and baby Severn is dead, reckless

philosopher of floors and stairwells,

founder of speech, tyrant-prince,

squawking cricket, famished

at twilight and dawn;

 

and here they lurk, next door to a squatty

pyramid, ten or twelve feral cats, a flea market

packed with bargain-mad nuns; and before us,

a whistling man digging a ditch. Two pear-shaped

English ladies consult a guidebook,

 

peering anxiously at a laurel shrub

for aid; the cheerful digger, unconsulted,

flaps a dirty hand toward the damp corner

where Keats and baby Severn hide,

not far from baby Shelley,

 

though Shelley himself is stuffed into denser

congress, cheek-to-jowl with Corso,

that misbegotten seeker, and a thousand other

amputated poets, Christian soldiers, wastrel

lovers of light not cited in the ladies’ guidebook

 

or anywhere else, for that matter,

a collection of forgotten Protestants farmed out

for eternity to this heretic Anglo-Saxon outpost

nestled at the bony knee of an ancient dump,

by far the tidiest park I’ve seen in Rome.

Compare the Aventine on Sunday morning—

parade of chubby brides and crabby mothers,

grooms dangling like haute-couture chimps

from the orange trees, high-heeled grandmas

shaking fists at pig-headed husbands who refuse

 

to beam, a dozen stray soccer balls, bums snoring

in the lanky grass, and beyond us, all Rome

painted under the haze like a tacky postcard.

They don’t let bums nap in the Protestant Cemetery,

though it would be a pleasant place to rest,

 

like sleeping in the Secret Garden, high-walled

and remote, a clipped thick lawn, green

as a golf course, smooth footpaths, and neat little

English-speaking arrows directing mourners

to “Gramsci” and “W.C.”

 

It’s a relief to us Protestants, this orderly

plantation, yet even here Italian chaos

creeps over the fence: Where is the “Keats” sign?

worry the English ladies, fidgeting at the edge

of the ditch. The digger lays down his spade,

 

waves both hands toward the corner,

smile packed with intention, but does he intend

“Keats”? The ladies retreat into their sunhats,

nod wanly, then too vigorously, then hasten

precipitously into the shade, pretending to search

 

for Shelley. Only when my friend and I forge

boldly over the ditch and beeline a placid trio

of stones do the ladies brake and regress, politely

hovering with cameras while I examine the earth

for traces of violets (none) and consider

 

the fate of baby Severn, dead of an accident,

age one year. Another predestined blunder—

tipped out of a casement, choked on marzipan,

crushed by the cart of a fruit vendor . . .

My friend, a Sicilian Catholic from New Jersey,

amiably shouts, “Grazie!” at the digger,

who murmurs, “Prego, prego,” and eyes her tits.

It’s our last day in Rome, and she is humoring me,

killing time with dead poets and babies

when we could be squatting on the hot

 

Pantheon steps devouring artichokes

and strawberries from a plastic bag.

She flits her false lashes knowingly

at the digger, shifts her brassy red

pocketbook to the other freckled shoulder;

 

and the fidgeting ladies, alarmed,

are nonetheless impressed by her sang-froid,

another trait of my hungry people—

this laborious, admiring fear of eros:

and it is lovely,

 

the digger’s desire, my friend’s frank

acknowledgment, though I, like the ladies,

blush and scuttle. Shelley, poor sap,

doing his Jim-Morrison dance all over town,

wasn’t, at heart, much better off;

 

he had to invent a sort of faith transcending

faithlessness—a house of cards

that would have crushed him in the end,

if the gulf hadn’t eaten him first.  The digger

commences his whistle, my friend and I recede,

 

the ladies, shy as ducks, open their Portable

Romantics and murmur a brief hymn;

the short lady sighs and closes her damp eyes:

all praise, they sing, to Keats,

bright star, alone and palely loitering.

 

Dying, you came staggering to Rome to live,

choking on black phlegm and gore,

dim eyes fixed on a gaudy sky.

And left behind your tired epitaph.

Nothing we make will matter.

 

Here it idles, scratched into the mossy

opalescent damp, embroidered with a passel

of lament you didn’t want to hear.

But too little is never enough for our people,

once we’ve been jolted to love;

 

and I know baby Severn’s father loved you,

dragging his nursemaid bones

down to the city limits sixty years later,

waiting out Judgment Day with you

and his child in arms, under the noon

 

jangle of a dozen Holy Roman church bells,

trams hissing to a stop, digger whistling an unknown

tune, my friend crossing herself, tendering

a muttered prayer for her cancer-mangled breast.

I’d light a candle, my brothers, if that were our way.

[first published in the Puckerbrush Review]