Scirocco

In Rome, at 26

                        Piazza di Spagna,

at the foot of a long

                        flight of

stairs, are rooms

                        let to Keats

in 1820,

                        where he died.  Now

you can visit them,

                        the tiny terrace,

the bedroom.  The scraps

                        of paper

on which he wrote

                        lines

are kept behind glass,

                        some yellowing,

some xeroxed or

                        mimeographed. . . .

Outside his window

                        you an hear the scirocco

working

                        the invisible.

Every dry leaf of ivy

                        is fingered,

refingered.  Who is

                        the nervous spirit

of this world

                        that must go over and over

what it already know,

                        what is it

so hot and dry

                        that’s looking through us,

by us,

                        for its answer?

In the arbor

                        on the terrace

the stark hellenic

                        forms

of grapes have appeared.

                        They’ll soften

till weak enough

                        to enter

our world, translating

                        helplessly

from the beautiful

                        to the true. . . .

Whatever the spirit,

                        the thickening grapes

are part of its looking,

                        and the slow hands

that made this mask

                        of Keats

in his other life,

                        and the old woman,

the memorial’s

                        custodian,

sitting on the porch

                        beneath the arbor

sorting chick-peas

                        from pebbles

into her cast-iron

                        pot.

See what her hands

                        know¾

they are its breath,

                        its mother

tongue, dividing,

                        discarding.

There is light playing

                        over the leaves,

over her face,

                        making her

abstract, making

                        her quick

and strange.  But she

                        has no care

for what speckles her,

                        changing her,

she is at

                        her work.  Oh how we want

to be taken

                        and changed,

want to be mended

by what we enter.

Is it thus

                        with the world?

Does it wish us

                        to mend it,

light and dark,

                        green

and flesh?  Will it

                        be free then?

I think the world

                        is a desperate

element.  It would have us

                        calm it,

receive it.  Therefore this

                        is what I

must ask you

                        to imagine:  wind;

the moment

                        when the wind

drops; and grapes,

                        which are nothing,

which break

                        in your hands.


by Jorie Graham