Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ARRIVAL IN ROME, by JENNIFER GROTZ


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ARRIVAL IN ROME, by                    
First Line: My head aches, and the stale air burns
Subject(s): Absence; Love; Railroads; Rome, Italy; Solitude; Travel; Separation; Isolation; Railways; Trains; Loneliness; Journeys; Trips


I.

My head aches, and the stale air burns
my throat, pricks me into sweat and dream.
The train rushes its heavy skeleton, shakes
my head side to side in half-paralysis
—the nimbus state of half-sleep—and when
I open my eyes, feverish, near laughter,
the blur of lights far off—Venice—carnival
with men in top hats,
women dressed as harlequins or
divas or fat, fuzzy bees.

II.

How impossible it is to be alone,
not to be seen, impossible not
to look, even in fever to give oneself up
to not looking, to close the eyes for sleep
in this paradox of stillness and movement,
to be prone and yet hurtling through the dark
that presses against the compartment's windows
while a couple whispers in the aisle.
To know there is always something beyond
and to fear that one may never arrive.

III.

You appeared like a gargoyle floating in the corner
of my room, beseeched "Sink not Lethe-ward!"
By day my tongue stuttered French, grew
proficient, never graceful. In France I was
never beautiful. I rose on cold mornings,
ate oatmeal cooked in my one pot, served in
my one bowl eaten with my filched spoon.
I would reflect the world.
I promised myself I would find you,
I would glow my uncertainty like the moon.

IV.

I let them fetch the dusty books of letters
from the hidden stacks of the Sorbonne.
Under windows letting in the city's dark
I was one woman amid the hundred
tables and lamps. All winter I read.
You prayed like a heathen to your Venus star.
The nightingale could sing even as it flew.
I prayed to you.
I can't explain why I thought you loved me too.
"That which is creative must create itself."

V.

Darling, you have been my sweetest companion,
and for many a time I have been in love
with this in-between, volleyed back and forth,
never able to know the now escaping
like water moving through fingers. Now
more than ever it seems impossible
to unthink the lover's hot breath against
the cheek, the ear, to brush
one's face up against the now, close
one's eyes and be carried off to bed.

VI.

Oh, to arrive in Rome! where you go
to die and I to find you, to walk the streets
with tourists and taxis, the lemony light off
ivory buildings, to stare at Moses with his horns,
at Apollo chasing Daphne as she twists
into branches. All that moves will later
freeze: the death mask of your face.
I'll remember your letters,
every word I can conjure:
"The tears will come to your eyes. Let them."

VII.

Fog, first a little, then wind blowing it
up and away those mornings I trudged
through the gardens, past the big-bellied Balzac
on Boulevard Raspail. You were nowhere.
My breath billowed out in clouds of steam,
unable to be controlled, almost embarrassing.
The train cries out. It is nearly dawn.
The fever breaks and takes
you with it. You were with me, palpable.
In the rattling, I am waiting to arrive.


First published in The Kenyon Review, Volume 25 #3/4 Summer/Fall 2003.
www.kenyonreview.org






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