Poetry |

“Sabbatical,” “Genealogy” & “Allegory”

Sabbatical

 

 

No one ever knows what comes next,

and I’ve seen how deluded we can be, bewildered,

apprehensive, squandering all our dreams

in sleep, but in those days I saw myself

as a figure in a diorama, as if

someone sat me down in a tiny wooden chair.

I’d lost a dear friend I couldn’t get over

so stayed in my hotel room or sat at the bar.

I knew I’d go missing if I lugged my life

around the corsos of Mezzegra

but I got lucky, stumbling on a celebration:

the anniversary of Mussolini’s hanging.

What we call history, it happened here.

Old men with walkers and canes

clinked shots of prosecco, a young waitress

served hors d’oeuvres, and from a balcony

a clown played a march on his trombone.

I’d been missing everything.

How long would it take

to find my own town, my own cafes

and cemeteries, monstrosities and joys,

where I could kneel and let those laments

course through me? Then what plagued me

for so long could sit beside me

while I drank, and sang in someone else’s tongue.

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

Genealogy

 

 

I.

 

Once I saw him

in the clouds. His face,

pale and puffy,

(from drinking I guess),

dispersing

with a gust of wind,

but alone for once,

so I could talk

to his scattered selves —

myself, that’s

who I’m talking to,

who I’ve always talked to.

 

 

II.

 

I was born

under the tutelage

of a woman

who never lived.

Our doors

shut, our shades

drawn: we only

let the dimness in.

She taught me how

to fear the fearful

world, to draw

from a well

the empty pail.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

Allegory

 

 

Whatever it means to live in lightness,

whether it’s skimming a melody in a major key

or trimming the roses without thinking,

 

welcoming the finch and the daffodil

as dazzling enough or forgiving the past

for knowing no better, these remedies

 

were meant for those with sunlit porches

and abundant bank accounts. My scenarios

were shabby, fraught, replete with mistakes:

 

my moments of malevolence,

whole sentences I should never have spoken:

they plague me still. And couldn’t I have married

 

the right person once? Once I spent a week

in Tuscany, climbing the hills, drinking Brunellos

I couldn’t afford, but every night I lay awake

 

worrying how I’d survive my debts.

I spent a whole afternoon with a terrapin

as it dragged its thick limbs from a shaded thicket

 

to the beach, sunning itself in the remaining light

before it ducked into its shell to sleep.

Imagine that, the remaining light! Who’d forget

 

the lesson there? But we who linger

on grief and doubt, aren’t we the true believers,

if not in Christ then in the calamity of history?

 

 

Contributor
Ira Sadoff

Ira Sadoff’s eight collection of poems is Country, Living (Alice James, 2020).

Posted in Poetry

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