Dublin

At Trastevere


There is something to be relieved about
to have you far away
and me here at my table for one,
able to gaze at the stunning Italians next door,
able to gaze at the gray sky comma-ed with gulls,
at the fire-dancers in the square.
instead of your half-hidden
girders of cheekbone,
black wrath of hair,
those blue eyes
bewildering, inflaming, enemies to every other appetite.

I know there is a blue under the waves
the color of them.
I would dive for it even if I didn’t know how far.

There is something to be said for consuming
this goddamn salad
with the same salt sea in neap tide from my eyes.
Yes, waiter, I would like another glass of red.
I am crying over that.
The Italians at the next table see me.
Watch me, then. Watch me lean over, making the gesture
of the connoisseur,
shaking it down upon my plate. I’ll say,
“You cannot know the savor, salted like this,
thinking of him, and he, thank God, years now away.”


December 31, 2007

Took an early bus to Dun Laoghaire. It’s a pretty town, but something, maybe DJ’s account of it long ago, made me expect more. The Irish Sea lay gray and calm, gulls arrayed around his head like a crown. I didn’t know whether to walk by the sea or through the down. I chose the town, and I think that was wrong.

I stopped at the town’s bookshop and asked for Gogarty. One being told that Gogarty was a poet, the girl said, “Ah, all the poetry is down in the cellar for the Christmas season.”

Late lunch at Trastevere put it into my head that I should go seeking Diarmuid. I ate there with him, and then watched him moving on the other side of the glass, with the people in the street stopping with their mouths open to stare at him. What a romantic idea, having only his name and the remembrance of a body. I believe those old stories, though, where lover finds lover through impossible odds. It could happen. That it doesn’t happen to me doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I stood in Temple Square looking this way and that, not knowing where to begin, then realizing there was no way to begin, no reason once more to be going down that road. If he had looked for me once he could have found me. I pressed my book into his hands. If he googled me I would be there on forty pages, and any one would lead him to me. No, that’s not the shape my life took. Finish the excellent lunch and move on.