IItaliam Fato Profugus

That land, an ancient land whose name I knew
only from reading, dazzled us with fruits.
Goat-footed boys ringed us with dance. They blew
disturbing melodies on antiques flutes.

Melons and grapes moulded from almond paste,
fresh pomegranates and alligator pears
left me with hunger for an apple's taste
mellowed half a winter below stairs.

Now I have come, in autumn, from that land
to apple country, crisp with autumn's chill.
I find the taste of apple far too bland;
goat-footed ghosts ring me with dancing still.

Squirrels chitter in the bare-branched apple tree,
repeating the flute theme in a different key.

Back to Sorrento

     Vid' u mare di Surriento
     che tesoro tiene in funno,
     chi ha girato tutto u munno
     nun l'ha visto come cca.

In Sorrento, there were ashes in the streets.
Vesuvius smirked at us across the bay.
Drinking a bad vermut, we heard them play
Turn' a Surriento, but the Siren slept.
The sea, of course, was blue, yet somehow kept
its treasure to itself. Our glances met;
you flicked the last inch of a cigarette
among the swarm of squabbling scugnizz.

But when, one night in Rome, a waiter sang,
Napoletano through and through, we heard
crouched in his song, the drowsy Siren's cry.
In Rome the streets were cleaner, but he sang
Sorrento and the sea, and you and I
were ready, then, to take him at his word.

Nolo Contendere

Walk, then, with me by unfrequented ways
to that same rocky hilltop where we stood
and heard the lullaby of summer days,
assured that all the earth was green and good.

Stand there with me in silence as before;
the birds are bedding and the cricket, hark,
the cricket raises heartsick sounds once more
amid soft murmurs of approaching dark.

The twilight mists, that fill the fields the same
still way we used to watch them, rolling through
the slack-barred gate, are tangled in the grain
that nods and slumbers under evening dew.

While we stand thus, perhaps the time between
will die for us, as though it had not been.

Ulysses With Guitar

"Ulysses is useless," my roommate growled. He threw
his brand new copy on our window seat,
jumped up, paced the room, planted his feet
before me. I was torturing my new
acoustic guitar. The breeze which entered through
our casement window brought with it late spring heat.
My fingers stumbled as I missed a beat.
The wind's fingers ruffled pages as they flew.

He took the guitar and played with expert ease.
I frowned, picked up the book and read that page
where the wind's fingers stopped, and as he played
I found nothing to explain his gust of rage
among those words. My hands would never tease
such sounds from that guitar. I asked him, "Trade?"

May in New Haven

By every wall of ivy, sparrow-full,   
urgent with chirping; by the laughing cries 
of slim, quick-tripping girls, with bedroom eyes 
free of the fears that come this year or next;  
by frank, young smiles, offered without pretext;  
by squirrels, erotic in the budding oak;  
by red skies at night, over the city's smoke;  
by sunlight, warm and soft as prom night tulle,  

By all of these, and by the light they bring 
into the dim room where the student's mind 
wanders bewitched, lost in Riemannian space,  
the Yale man feels that, soon perhaps, he'll find 
a curvature sufficient to efface 
the non-Euclidean sorcery of spring. 

Three-Cornered Dreams

Alter your summers with forgetfulness:
Siciliam sunlight, dripping into wine,
distilling pagan laughter through the vine,
spattering grinning grapes along the hill. . .
Alter your seasons; by an act of will
attend no dryads. These are saner trees
with prim and proper habits. None of these
Mayflower descendants shall you see undress.
          
Alter your love with disciplines. Repress
the rich, brown laughter from that other land.
Buy mackinaws against the winter chill.
Grow sober; can an old god's open hand,
so prodigal, remembered, cast largesse
n fields where he is unremembered still?