Ljubljana
“I knew he was in love with me,” she said,
“but my new, wealthy husband, then one by one
the children, those who lived and those who died,
claimed my attention. Also he’d started drinking,
and I wasn’t happy with those sonnets tying
his fate to that of our unhappy homeland,
though I didn’t feel it was a stretch.” She gestures
at her bas-relief two stories up.
“It flatters me somewhat. Also, I was nearsighted;
can I really see his statue two blocks away?”
She leads us to his other surviving
haunts. Of the four clueless tourists, three
drift off; the literature student
savors and files some visual referent;
and then there are – if the phrase isn’t
too quaint – the lovers. The place where
he drank with decayed intellectual nobles
is a bank; by the stream he loved,
she kneels embarrassingly at the spot
where he imagined making love to her.
Small Window
She couldn’t get out.
Said she needed,
but really only had,
to work. There were pressures
beyond that of traumatizing
the kids, perhaps darkening
their entire future;
but then, kids’ futures are bad anyway.
Not her thought. She stole
a moment to watch
the yellow appearing
among green leaves, lending
weight to the royal, no, imperial blue
backdrop. It was the sort of day
when those who like cool
regain the IQ points
they lost in May. Vast
parks she knew
to the north of one city,
in the heart of another, infused
images of a picnic,
philosophical
discussion, constrained
but vigorous foreplay. Hard
to judge if this vision
was classical or romantic.
Benchmark
Some feared thing happens, not the way
you’d imagined: more simply, vulgarly,
offhandedly. And you have
a glimpse of how small you are
(heart and gut even smaller) in
the scheme of things – portentous phrase! –
that vision reputed to bring peace,
which doesn’t. The eyes of passersby
(in this era, one imagines Fifth Avenue,
valley of decision) say Deal with it;
then each retreats into the fortress
where each is safe and all-competent.
In a bar, one of those where nothing
untoward ever happens, you notice how
the glass at the end of your arm
is lifting your arm; how
the drink is drinking you, although you’re paying.
Slow Movement
Music was coming
from somewhere outside – my music,
a minority taste; and I wondered
who among the faces
I know by sight but seldom address
(nor they each other) was playing it.
And pushed aside
knowing that the bemused, healthy
response, if sought, would involve
an accident, a passing mood,
“I like all music” … Constructed
instead a tenuous
widening circle, a community
like that of leaves on successive trees
and streets touched by
one breeze, a thought beneath
melancholy, a pause inflecting action …
the silence of all other things
expanding till it reached
my nonexistent hill.