The sun rises late and the days are all grey satin.
I will do a little French then tea with Agnes,
for whom I am now just one more nuisance,
like a piece of fruit gone quietly bad. I will try
to face her with the imagination one might want
of a poem, but she can be difficult, like a person
of ordinary intelligence who thinks disagreeing
is the best way to cultivate a self. I will remind
myself that she overcooks vegetables, has taste
in furniture like a woman who cuts her hair short,
and I will know that I have lost again. Why in love
are things we can’t first see the only ones we can
see in the end? Why in the end is love always like
having eaten a whole pint of ice cream? But I will
listen to what little she has to say, wait a few minutes
so as not to seem peevish, then ask if I might
have my boots back, boots and my gran’s rosary,
and tonight again in a clearer sky that same moon
squinting down at me through the one skylight.

–The Agnes Poems

Every body has a language all its own but
we held each other like tangled trees,

folded each other’s clothes, wept
in the garden under a daylight moon.

No one learns anything without help.
The dog stumbles fording a salty creek.

The crow in the walnut tree isn’t quite right.
The palm trees are twisting like angry women.

Still, on Friday, there was a big swell,
and you with your Warhol hoodie, looked

at the great abundance of lemons
and quoted Baudelaire.

D’un ait vague et rêveur elle essayait des poses,
Et la candeur unie à la lubricité.

–The Agnes Poems

1. Firenze

That third shimmering day
we laughed each other silly,
then dined on veal cheek and
lemon sorbetto. At the river
the spillway above ponte alle grazie
burned like a ribbon of phosphorus.

One goes up il duomo
between its two stone skins.
From the cupola you can see
to Fiesole. Now you are washing
dishes while I try to write poetry.
No, I tell you. I want, you say.

2. Roma

In one of the old churches
we went down to the crypt.
Your sister stopped me on
the impossible stairway there
to say to me softly,
This is where I fell in love.

Here is what I remember:
Standing you up to kiss you.
I am cold, you said.
Be cold, I told you. Outside
there was a long Roman wall
crumbling to pieces.

–The Agnes Poems

When you lay your hands above your head
and I have all of you like the king’s peaches
or the limbs of something very lithe,
the thin tendril of espalier in winter,
the pert bud of a fig like a button,
the furtive primrose at the dark foot
of the old wall where the late light
of this last January day shines as if for angels.

In Trieste and our difficult bed you sat
back on your heels and instructed me
in French about délicatesse
in an altogether different sort of light,
like the silk of your blue camisole
or the half moon through a grey scrim.
Tu es la femme assise ici. Toujours.
These old walls are still alive with us.

–The Agnes Poems

When I arrived your terrace glass
was open a hand’s width.

There was an almost breeze, a quite breeze
that stirred the air like a ghost.

I lay there on the sofa where you
kissed me. My skin remembered

how it once was. We made an apple tart,
you folded my clothes.

I can hear you laughing in French
in the bedroom, where at night

I hold you like the sun
of these first warm days.

At the park the fuschia sky
went all the way to the tour Eiffel.

Yes, my face fills with the same light
when you appear.

You see, you have a passenger.
At the market

the fruit vendor says, Let your husband
take the cart,

and when your sister calls
to ask the difference in English

between from and by,
I am too dizzy to know what to tell her.

The day before I leave, thinking
you are just sad I say,

I know you don’t hate me.
Yes, I do, you tell me.

–The Agnes Poems

Let us never speak

of the fractured china,
nor of the swans

or the lamb
and the rosemary.

Let us never speak
of Beckett’s grave

or the ruined bicyclist
and the dog in the air,

of the mercury light
and the mosque,

of the skin of your thigh,
of my white shirt.

Everywhere the air
seemed lighter, and you,

I watched you, dancing
in the terrace window

like a girl
in any spring.

–The Agnes Poems

Imagine a shape eased from perfect marble
in the white light of a November noon,

or drifting through mist on a thatch
of sycamore leaves. Both of you, from

hips to plinth, at the sauntering center
of something we all wonder at. Not everything

needs right angles. So let us rethink this:
the feel of the sheets that first night,

the whitefish, courgette and viognier,
your arm holding on, our hands,

that kiss on your cheek as the Arabs watched.
Yes, I must touch you to see you.

–The Agnes Poems

I.

During this humid month
the hummingbirds hover
like small angels,

and Agnes goes to Rome
in a long, light dress.
What should one think?

It is only now we see
the goldenrod is also blooming.
It will be hot like this

until October when
everything softens to
orange.

II.

In the hard hills
of this our lost place
we gather lavender and sage,

then evening opens,
there is that closing
of the fragile sky.

We sit together in
a kind of garden, there
is musical water,

there are shapes
of things without shadow.
It seems impossible.

III.

In my very small
dream, I lift her dress off,
she is like a slight bough,

like a limb that bends
in sunlight.
We pull each other

close. Outside the street
makes its noisy song.
Then we dance,

if one can call it dancing,
our slow gathering
in another deep sweetness.

–The Agnes Poems

I began these in about November 2021 during very happy living in Italy and France; the last is from January 2023.