I'm walking down the Vincolo del Amore Divino in Rome
with a girl I hardly know, behind us the Spanish Steps,
Keats's words swimming inside me like thousands of fish
in a transparent tank of skin, and if his breath lingered,
it's gone now, mixed with the sieg heils of Mussolini,
the ecumenical denunciations of 15 popes, the pidgin
of the Japanese American soldiers from Hawaii
who liberated Rome but weren't allowed to march into the city
during the day, the cries of the baffled Romans who saw them
and shouted, Cinese, Cinese, and the millions of tourists
aiming cameras with lenses the size of a whale's penis
saying to the mystified ticket sellers, Is this a museum?
What isn't a museum? My body being Exhibit A. Step right up,
ladies and gents, a once beautiful specimen
broken down by Time and vino rosso. I have a lion's teeth
and a mockingbird's tongue, 400 million items
clogging my curio cabinet brain, and no strategy to clear the clutter.
Oh, no, my dear doctor, I am adding to the detritus,
as when watching an infomercial at three in the morning, and a woman
has cured herself of a horrible disease with a ten-point program:
eating organic and drinking more water, yoga, fresh air,
but the one that really throws me is to forgive everyone
who has ever done me wrong, which I know is right but so very hard to do,
and I go through all my enemies and wish them well,
but that's not the same as forgiving them, because wishing them well
is in the future whereas forgiveness is anchored in the past,
which is a continent of jungles, the Gobi Desert, and London bombed
by the blitz, or so I'm thinking while walking in Rome,
and we pass a shop of gowns so frothy and pink that wearing them
would transfer you to another plane of existence,
as in a few days when a tsunami will rage through the Indian Ocean,
and Katrina is in the offing, but of all the gods, Jehovah
must sometimes show his wrath, for he is a jealous god,
as is Shiva stirring up his mayhem in the waters of Earth,
but I'm walking down the street of divine love,
Il Vincolo del Amore Divnino, and I want a God
big enough to love those who don't believe in him,
because isn't it enough just to walk this world
with its psychedelic wah wah, its lightning storms and squalor,
Paris and Calcutta, so I'm walking down the street of divine love,
listening to Son House sing “John the Revelator”—Who's that writing?
John the Revelator. Who's that writing? It's Rimbaud
on his drunken boat, Noah railing on his ark, the Emperor Domitian
staging naval battles in the flooded Piazza Navona,
and yesterday I saw Caravaggio's St. Matthew and the Angel,
the otherworldly creature dipping down to tap
the former tax collector on his noggin with some divine inspiration.
Where is my angel? For I'm on the street of divine love,
and if this pavement isn't God, then I have nothing to pin my hopes on
like a big orchid corsage before the senior prom, so I am walking,
with the Visigoths rampaging through Rome, gli fascisti
being harangued by Mussolini, popes lining up like Barbie dolls
on Bernini's loggia, Severn burying his friend out by the pyramid
beyond Rome's walls, where some ragged bird is perched
on a palm tree, singing his heart out for everyone walking alone
through the alleys and fields of this broken night on Earth.