Like, people get emotionally tied to the first person who fucks them up the ass, god willing, we were driving toward Biarritz & stopped to call Alexis, exhilaration in our voices as we described the scenery, an emotion akin to Carlos Williams's man swinging a shirt over his head or Hass's shouting hello to an empty house, & as the one pleasure of the traveler holding a lemon to his nose on a windless day is to know he can leave, the week we saw Arles we enlarged everything out of our minds, Arles exactly as painted by Van Gogh, the goldenrod, wheat, apple trees, no one tending them in all the hours we drove, for the French, odd, not a soul, the difference being we had each other & were still believing in a god, menage a trois, the next day slept between mountains where the proprietor caught trout & we ate in the poised and spirited style of women alone among men in the immaculate dining room, like a picture of a country dining room serving rose pears. What a night in a featherbed in a room with a high ceiling, life has been good, good, finding our empty purse & providing the wine we drink under a quilt. I did not want anyone to see that my face was so happy, because I had slipped into the face of my dead, who know so precisely what to relive with their heads calmed like a unicorn in the lap of a virgin, & through me drive through France with you, this mental self who buys a paper & crosses the square for a beer in Tourrette-sur-Loup, scaling the terraces of the olive trees after lunch to play the wooden flute. It's this distance from you, this freedom we have to forgive, that keeps us on a tether like goats, exactly like ghosts. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...GUILIELMUS REX by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE by EMILY DICKINSON AN ODE IN IMITATION OF ALCAEUS by WILLIAM JONES THE PHILOSOPHER by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY GOOD FRIDAY (1) by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI CASTOR AND POLYDEUCES by ALCAEUS OF MYTILENE |