Solfatara
Waiting for the bus to Pozzuoli
we were beset by a swarm of urchins
in ragged shorts and torn shirts, grime
ingrained into their knee and elbow scars,
and their eyes were not begging but merciless
as they tore at our clothes like those troops
of toothy monkeys who descend on tourists
at ruined temples buried deep in jungles
far from human aid, and when they’d huddled
us like harried sheep a priest in a full roman
cassock and a biretta with a ragged tuft
waded in, scattering them and unctuously
demanding a donation for freeing us.
I’d wheedled and sulked until my parents
took us to the fun volcano rather than
the usual old church, smelling of urine outside
and stale incense inside, where widows
crouching in candle-lit gloom like sacks of coal
mutter prayers up at the tortured corpse
or to his perpetually pitying mother,
in order to peer into shadowed recesses
of gated naves at ancient paintings of martyrs
piously posed martyrs, though obscured
by centuries of soot more like ghosts,
all the while being lectured not to whine
about privileged cultural experiences
that in years hence I’d recollect, glad
I’d not been allowed to squander them.
Back stateside, as I put it, to classmates
who thought it exotic to cross the big puddle,
as I put it, back in those days before jets
boomed through sound, before we ducked
and covered, with kids who’d never seen trucks
careen by full of blue-smocked workers
waving the commie hammer and sickle flag,
or nuns buzzing lickety-split sidesaddle
on Vespas, their black habits flapping
like witches riding brooms, I was tucked
tight again into a backrow desk across an aisle
from a sallow-faced girl with red frizzy hair
whose starched dresses stank like poo-poo
when they rustled, and thus boys reviled her,
jeering “farty eggs” at recess, and girls
shunned her, hissing and snorting behind hands
cupped over mouths, cruel joy sparkling
their eyes and, whereas all other desks
were cluttered with Valentines, only three
lay in front of her, and so to not see
her wet eyes I stared hard past her out
the window where snow clumps were sliding
slowly off pine boughs to silently fall
into smushed lumps on playground asphalt.
Freed from wet cold weight, branches
sprang back up with small flounces like a dog
will shake a fly off its nose, but by then
the teacher was doing what teachers will do
and one sealed envelope from each kid
was collected by the bossy girl who gladly did
the teacher’s bidding and brought to the desk
of the sad girl unloved for her smell,
and by then her sobs were shaking the ruffles
on her hand-sewn dress so hard
that the harder I stared outdoors the stronger
a rotten stench engulfed me, until, dizzy
with it, I recognized its name--lo zolfo--
fumaroles seething and spitting beneath
the flimsy planks that lay between us
and a hatred the earth hides from us.
The memory of putrid steam swirling up
up as mustard yellow mist mingled
with the sharp odor of her shame and grief,
and as I gagged and hid watering eyes
with my hands, I remembered how the guide
with a thin mean grin on his smallpox rutted face
pinched my arm, as hard as when a goose
bit my buttock on my grandfather’s farm,
while my father was droning on ahead of us
about Seneca at Puteoli with a professor
from Padua who wore sunglasses in his hair
and his coat caped on his shoulders,
and I saw again the cicerone’s mean squint
when he nudged me at the roiling pit--
la porta dell’inferno,si?—I heard harsh laughter,
saw him spit hard into the boiling mud
and sneer the word debole while tears
sprouted in my eyes, and as I now remember
that remembering, I can see again that nod
all-his-own how my father shook his head
while he explained to me the fascist pin
the guide flashed by flipping over his shiny
worn lapel, cursing disgust with his tip.
So I knew sulfur, a scent of cruel innocence,
like blue smoke that lingers over the blind
while the dogs splash off to fetch the dead,
or above the fenced-off shooting range
where men on weekends fire war rifles
at targets in the shape of men to ease stress
that seethes just underneath their ease,
and now, I, who was one of three
because my mother made me sign a card
of love for every child, can imagine that girl
stepping from the bus with catcalls
following her, I can see her run along
the dirt drive that stiff swaying way
that girls run with her lunchbox banging
her hip, past the weed-buried Ford,
past the rusted washer, caved-in shed,
past the tainted well beside the asbestos-
sided house, to the small boy waiting
for her on the porch.
we were beset by a swarm of urchins
in ragged shorts and torn shirts, grime
ingrained into their knee and elbow scars,
and their eyes were not begging but merciless
as they tore at our clothes like those troops
of toothy monkeys who descend on tourists
at ruined temples buried deep in jungles
far from human aid, and when they’d huddled
us like harried sheep a priest in a full roman
cassock and a biretta with a ragged tuft
waded in, scattering them and unctuously
demanding a donation for freeing us.
I’d wheedled and sulked until my parents
took us to the fun volcano rather than
the usual old church, smelling of urine outside
and stale incense inside, where widows
crouching in candle-lit gloom like sacks of coal
mutter prayers up at the tortured corpse
or to his perpetually pitying mother,
in order to peer into shadowed recesses
of gated naves at ancient paintings of martyrs
piously posed martyrs, though obscured
by centuries of soot more like ghosts,
all the while being lectured not to whine
about privileged cultural experiences
that in years hence I’d recollect, glad
I’d not been allowed to squander them.
Back stateside, as I put it, to classmates
who thought it exotic to cross the big puddle,
as I put it, back in those days before jets
boomed through sound, before we ducked
and covered, with kids who’d never seen trucks
careen by full of blue-smocked workers
waving the commie hammer and sickle flag,
or nuns buzzing lickety-split sidesaddle
on Vespas, their black habits flapping
like witches riding brooms, I was tucked
tight again into a backrow desk across an aisle
from a sallow-faced girl with red frizzy hair
whose starched dresses stank like poo-poo
when they rustled, and thus boys reviled her,
jeering “farty eggs” at recess, and girls
shunned her, hissing and snorting behind hands
cupped over mouths, cruel joy sparkling
their eyes and, whereas all other desks
were cluttered with Valentines, only three
lay in front of her, and so to not see
her wet eyes I stared hard past her out
the window where snow clumps were sliding
slowly off pine boughs to silently fall
into smushed lumps on playground asphalt.
Freed from wet cold weight, branches
sprang back up with small flounces like a dog
will shake a fly off its nose, but by then
the teacher was doing what teachers will do
and one sealed envelope from each kid
was collected by the bossy girl who gladly did
the teacher’s bidding and brought to the desk
of the sad girl unloved for her smell,
and by then her sobs were shaking the ruffles
on her hand-sewn dress so hard
that the harder I stared outdoors the stronger
a rotten stench engulfed me, until, dizzy
with it, I recognized its name--lo zolfo--
fumaroles seething and spitting beneath
the flimsy planks that lay between us
and a hatred the earth hides from us.
The memory of putrid steam swirling up
up as mustard yellow mist mingled
with the sharp odor of her shame and grief,
and as I gagged and hid watering eyes
with my hands, I remembered how the guide
with a thin mean grin on his smallpox rutted face
pinched my arm, as hard as when a goose
bit my buttock on my grandfather’s farm,
while my father was droning on ahead of us
about Seneca at Puteoli with a professor
from Padua who wore sunglasses in his hair
and his coat caped on his shoulders,
and I saw again the cicerone’s mean squint
when he nudged me at the roiling pit--
la porta dell’inferno,si?—I heard harsh laughter,
saw him spit hard into the boiling mud
and sneer the word debole while tears
sprouted in my eyes, and as I now remember
that remembering, I can see again that nod
all-his-own how my father shook his head
while he explained to me the fascist pin
the guide flashed by flipping over his shiny
worn lapel, cursing disgust with his tip.
So I knew sulfur, a scent of cruel innocence,
like blue smoke that lingers over the blind
while the dogs splash off to fetch the dead,
or above the fenced-off shooting range
where men on weekends fire war rifles
at targets in the shape of men to ease stress
that seethes just underneath their ease,
and now, I, who was one of three
because my mother made me sign a card
of love for every child, can imagine that girl
stepping from the bus with catcalls
following her, I can see her run along
the dirt drive that stiff swaying way
that girls run with her lunchbox banging
her hip, past the weed-buried Ford,
past the rusted washer, caved-in shed,
past the tainted well beside the asbestos-
sided house, to the small boy waiting
for her on the porch.
