Was is it an allegory of divine providence?
Or error of reification? At best, an appeal to probability.
It would take Plutarch and Shakespeare
Together to create so parallel a stage,
A theater with as many clouds and beams,
A shoreline for such drama and articulation,
Everything convergent on our arrival,
The return of art to life from art in life,
Doomed ice on shattered waters,
The vivid sun halo and vast light,
Sun dogs and rainbow zenith arcs,
It obscured both history and tragedy.
Poetry
Grandmother
Quieter than the quietest of quiet things,
My grandmother was a whisper.
We shared a bedroom for five years
When grandfather died and I was a boy.
Quieter than the quietest of quiet things,
A hand smoothing out a sheet, a breath,
Is yet too loud for how she woke
While I was sleeping, then never woke again.
Snail on Ripe Tomato
A garden snail on a ripe tomato
Was trailing its wet love
Along the seam of its feeding,
Absorbing what absorbs,
Slime and pulp merged,
The long slow contraction
Before the love dart’s fired,
Snail muscle mounting,
Pouring out of its shell,
Surging to be all surface
That swarms and liquefies.
Not a pest but a guest
To the best of my garden,
To my reservoirs of red rain
Swollen to bursting
Where the snail drinks the sun
From the inside out
And the earth is whole.
Florence, 1993
It was the night after the car bombing of the Uffizi.
The city was a vandalized painting of itself.
I walked the via Inferno, to via Purgatorio,
And saw a prostitute on a street corner
Pointing the way to paradise. I saw
A collapsed bridge in a burning river.
Every sculpture was writhing with animal pain,
Every tomb thrown open, every masterpiece blackened.
My shadow led me like a spirit guide
Amid the howls of lamentation;
The street was river of boiling blood.
Then I saw a light and a passageway.
Above the doors of an old church I read:
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
City of Cats
Palermo
In a city of cats shrill voices pierce rooms,
Clusters of jungle grow in parking lots,
Thick vines hang down from balconies,
Botanical gardens creep out of fences,
And alleyway become rutting grounds.
More than the all-night caterwauling,
All the terrifying and orgiastic voices,
Rabid loners with bared fangs drooling,
One senses the crumbling city overrun,
Felis libyca stirs, shadows stalk the ruins,
Nothing left but wild cats, and the rising sea.
And you beside me sleeping, fitful,
Night speaking through your dreams,
Manic laughter stilled to a purring breath,
Then the night cries of sexual shadows,
Then the fear again, ailurophobia,
Clawing the sheets as I stroke your hair.
She whom I knew, where is she now?
The body of a sphinx lies across the night.
I know her by the feral smile on your face,
And I who have been listening am afraid,
Afraid to sleep or to dream or to wake.
The Heaven of Handicapped Children
Where space flows like water,
So that nothing is hard or sharp,
Everywhere the pliant, buoyant, firm,
Infinitesimal balance of motion,
Equilibrium’s endless flowing
From every direction holding, releasing…
Or eternal and simultaneous interchange
Of subatomic and celestial particles,
Infinite number and regression,
The farthest point always near.
Gravity’s first rising.
Or regeneration’s genesis,
Beginning of all emerging,
The birth before birth,
Genealogy’s first molecule,
Progeny’s spring and curative.
Or clarity’s deepest water,
Simplicity’s essence distilled,
The weightlessness of all need
Where love is greater than chaos.
Nautical
When we make love
I am the masthead
And you are the sail
I am the bowsprit
And you are the night
Thank You, Poetry
Thank you, poetry, for my father’s barbershop,
For the barber chairs and soap machines,
For the windows and mirrors, for it being downtown,
For the movie theater and marquee next door,
For opening nights and the Saturday matinee.
Thank you for the barbershop magazine rack,
For the hours I had to read and wait,
Mirrors sinking my thoughts into dreams.
Thank you, poetry, for the weight of scissors,
For the fragrances of Clubman hair products,
For the sounds of the razor on the strop,
For the razor on the back of the neck,
For the hot towels and sting of aftershave.
Thank you for the bus rides downtown,
For my mother helping my father close
So we could all go home together.
Thank you, poetry, for the magic
Of those mirrors, for the poetry hidden there,
For letting this artless boy, the son of a barber,
Experience something of your presence
Among such humble things.
The Piano Tuner Tuning the Piano
A country doctor commencing on a cure
A chiropractor stretching the spine of his patient
An ornithologist listening for a particular bird
The dance of lonely awkward people
Children in a schoolyard making friends
Workers striking synchronous hammers
Mice euthanized in a whirlpool of squeals
Boxers wanting to lose the fight they’re winning
The glass of winter dawn shattering
Doors opening on the ringing of time
An avalanche burying the mountainside
A teardrop doing somersaults
Bells learning to cooperate in limited space
The concentration of a prisoner
Chiseling into a wall of silence
A jeweler cutting facets of pure sound
A strongbox opening on a combination that keeps locking it
Another Night at the Opera
At the sickbed of romance
The famous tenor split his pants,
The bodice of the soprano burst,
Letting air out of her aria first…
Tonight seven cell phones,
Twelve bleepers, sixteen coughs,
Forty yawns and eleven sneezes,
Accompanied by gassy breezes,
Joined the hissing, boos and jeers
Amid the music of the spheres.
When the mezzo-soprano began to trill,
Half the mezzanine took ill;
And the basso singing solo
Fell flat on his profondo.
Tonight the chorus was in chaos
When the andante lost its pathos
And the allegro lagged along
Far behind both act and song.
Even the conductor was confused
When the composer left bemused,
And the librettist wrote a letter:
“The opera could not be better—
Save for the flautist blowing Rigoletto,
Found toying with his piccoletto.”
Salvatore Ala 