This time we are getting drunk on retsina
in somebody’ s Italian backyard. We are a long way
from Georgia
and all of us are lonely. I wave my arms
and caw like Hadrian after his lover drowned himself.
My wife walks by the pond singing a hymn;
I think she is leaving me for good. I say, Imagine
my heart is huge and has
little men
walking around inside. They don’ t know each other
but they’ re stuck there eternally
and have to get along. One of them starts shouting;
he finds a black horse and rides it around in a circle.
The others laugh at him. He leaps from the horse and
starts to choke the smallest man. Something like a hand
starts pumping the heart
and the men nearly go crazy from the pressure.
— The first olive I picked from a tree
was so bitter I nearly threw up. My wife is strolling
around this strange landscape full of broken pediments
as if she plans to be happy from now on. I think
I have to tense it up, act like I’ m in control.
I don’ t think I can do that. In a few hours the sun will
rise over my brother’ s backyard in south Georgia.
He’ ll come out and admire the water jewels
the night has hung in the kumquat bush. He’ ll hear his son say,
‘Mama,
it’ s too big for me to wear,’ and remember quitting the baseball team
thirty years ago
and wish again he hadn’ t.
— I get up and march down to the pond. I start to speak
to my wife
but then I feel a hand
that is about to crush my heart.