First Fountains by Jonathan Eastman
The bus lurches, sweeps a corner.
Expresso and a continental roll
swirl up. This speeding isn't business
as usual to us, Americans, and not from New York,
although my friend passes for Italian--his Indian
complexion--until he speaks: he says again
he's been to Tivoli. We say Tivoli,
Tivoli, and faces turn. We hold on,
smelling Roman sweat edge our own,
watching the sun dance hand rails
workers' oil has slicked.
For a long time we pass through vineyards
dotted with squat olive trees, lined with dark towers--
trees they call cipressi. Our teeth form skins of red
dust wafted from the road. Our trust in fountains,
like a wounded man's trust in morphine, expands
to delusion: pert lips and nipples spouting
under dripping branches, drops rolling in blue
sky like gems rolling in a blue jewelry-tray
display. We can't help dreaming water-
melon, milk shake, country club swimming pool.
When we arrive the village is a maze, blinding,
neat. The fountains are closed until three.
A Japanese family, fooled like us, begs us
to take their picture against a street fountain
decked with nymphs and leaping porpoises.
We learn a new technique for nodding, a new patience
for focusing foreign smiles in the heat.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1986.
Expresso and a continental roll
swirl up. This speeding isn't business
as usual to us, Americans, and not from New York,
although my friend passes for Italian--his Indian
complexion--until he speaks: he says again
he's been to Tivoli. We say Tivoli,
Tivoli, and faces turn. We hold on,
smelling Roman sweat edge our own,
watching the sun dance hand rails
workers' oil has slicked.
For a long time we pass through vineyards
dotted with squat olive trees, lined with dark towers--
trees they call cipressi. Our teeth form skins of red
dust wafted from the road. Our trust in fountains,
like a wounded man's trust in morphine, expands
to delusion: pert lips and nipples spouting
under dripping branches, drops rolling in blue
sky like gems rolling in a blue jewelry-tray
display. We can't help dreaming water-
melon, milk shake, country club swimming pool.
When we arrive the village is a maze, blinding,
neat. The fountains are closed until three.
A Japanese family, fooled like us, begs us
to take their picture against a street fountain
decked with nymphs and leaping porpoises.
We learn a new technique for nodding, a new patience
for focusing foreign smiles in the heat.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1986.
Dogs' Daze by Jonathan Eastman
Over the stone step
our paws hang in utter suspension.
The superfluous
sundial
casts one unmoving shadow
deep into the Marquis' tower
where
even the air appears
to wait for him.
But the hour he arrives
is distant as our deaths,
and expectations a
long lie
to us who live this routine.
We seem to sleep,
like the hours,
pretend to dream
of things
overlooked,
overshadowed by his great
importance in our lives.
Seeing us from your stranger's eyes
you might wonder
Have we waited
while he passed?
Was it so narrow a time
that our jaded senses
failed
to notice that he came?
Cypresses
by Jonathan Eastman
Cypresses speak one giant word so slowly
a man forgets it before it passes from them.
To look up at them is to gauge
centuries. To look into them
is to delve into your own darkness,
twisted and more convoluted are they
than the thought of death.
Not trees you can easily understand
or climb, not squat spiked explosions
like eucalyptus, not elegant pyrotechnical
bursts like palms, but impenetrable
ruminating missiles of nature's imagination,
frozen cyclones thrust upon the horizon
like pikes a titanic Ulysses might reach for
to blind the gaping one eye of the universe,
yet still as stone, splendidly clean
against any sky--blue, burning or dun,
and so intensely cryptic that they were an obvious
choice for the ancients, who set them to line
the sides of wide ways leading to their sublime white temples.
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, July 2011
a man forgets it before it passes from them.
To look up at them is to gauge
centuries. To look into them
is to delve into your own darkness,
twisted and more convoluted are they
than the thought of death.
Not trees you can easily understand
or climb, not squat spiked explosions
like eucalyptus, not elegant pyrotechnical
bursts like palms, but impenetrable
ruminating missiles of nature's imagination,
frozen cyclones thrust upon the horizon
like pikes a titanic Ulysses might reach for
to blind the gaping one eye of the universe,
yet still as stone, splendidly clean
against any sky--blue, burning or dun,
and so intensely cryptic that they were an obvious
choice for the ancients, who set them to line
the sides of wide ways leading to their sublime white temples.
Published in Midwest Literary Magazine, July 2011
Reunion in a Formal Garden
by Jonathan Eastman
Brothers drinking to stake ourselves,
invading each other's silent scenario--
your marriage consumed in the heat of Saudi's day,
mine rising like the glassy moon
from the purple furnace of Verona's haze.
We share a need for the cold white wine
and to sound the depth of our delusions.
The picketed cypress silhouettes
tear at returning pictures of our boyhood,
leaving us superfluous statues in this garden
where love's blossom blooms and withers.
Our hands pass the slender green bottle
invading each other's silent scenario--
your marriage consumed in the heat of Saudi's day,
mine rising like the glassy moon
from the purple furnace of Verona's haze.
We share a need for the cold white wine
and to sound the depth of our delusions.
The picketed cypress silhouettes
tear at returning pictures of our boyhood,
leaving us superfluous statues in this garden
where love's blossom blooms and withers.
Our hands pass the slender green bottle
formally over the stone
sundial, like twin suns slowly toasting
time. We enjoy our scandal in the dark,
like the quick bats that game over our heads.
Pink oleander climbs
the face of the villa. We are told
one lick of its waxy leaf could be
enough. We wonder about enough
and how the bottle would sweat
without us, would be quaffed
over palates that could discern
ripeness, would be shared
by hands that had crushed the grapes
and filled the casks in cool dark
that truly quenched work's heat and ran deep
in cantinas where black webs lilted
in a draft of ancient memories,
where our reunion here would seem
a curious thing to be reckoned.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, Fall 1992.
sundial, like twin suns slowly toasting
time. We enjoy our scandal in the dark,
like the quick bats that game over our heads.
Pink oleander climbs
the face of the villa. We are told
one lick of its waxy leaf could be
enough. We wonder about enough
and how the bottle would sweat
without us, would be quaffed
over palates that could discern
ripeness, would be shared
by hands that had crushed the grapes
and filled the casks in cool dark
that truly quenched work's heat and ran deep
in cantinas where black webs lilted
in a draft of ancient memories,
where our reunion here would seem
a curious thing to be reckoned.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, Fall 1992.
Quick Romeo and Juliet in Castel Vecchio di Verona
by Jonathan Eastman
Curtain . . . first chords sweeping stone.
Twilight . . . spreading spot like a moan
Scene . . . cloistered yard, tower wall, ivy overgrown.
Loud bursts Mercutio and beaming Benvolio
chafing led-headed, swooning Romeo,
jesting for love's symptoms' slake.
Enter Juliet, prim, yet green velvet coquette
to threaten suspension of disbelief yet
willing just to wait for fresh sight
before adoring Romeo as much as we
already do, then turning to us with her plea
later, in white, frightening angels
sharing nightmare entombment anon
with Romeo, so close, but so cryptic still
we cannot help him, her . . . the end.
Twilight . . . spreading spot like a moan
Scene . . . cloistered yard, tower wall, ivy overgrown.
Loud bursts Mercutio and beaming Benvolio
chafing led-headed, swooning Romeo,
jesting for love's symptoms' slake.
Enter Juliet, prim, yet green velvet coquette
to threaten suspension of disbelief yet
willing just to wait for fresh sight
before adoring Romeo as much as we
already do, then turning to us with her plea
later, in white, frightening angels
sharing nightmare entombment anon
with Romeo, so close, but so cryptic still
we cannot help him, her . . . the end.
CHERRY PICKING--VILLA FUMANELLI by Jonathan Eastman
Like buttresses from temple walls,
the single-shaft picking ladders are pulled
from leaves below. The marquis' men--
buckets brimming red--desperse as by signal,
leaving the straniero to finish a tree again.
In two hours they picked their outside areas thin
while I climbed in and slowly robbed the shadowed heart--
a novice against old hands at this rosary,
against antic dialect that rose and vied
without my part, jokes on me I'd no chance to divine.
But I laughed at what little I gathered
and how I struggled to beat the steady drum
of their cherries, flung in bucket bottoms,
measuring progress upward rung to rung.
I yearned for praise they'd long since turned from.
In the distance, the sweeping arms are silent
unburdening branches as in meditation--
and I am alone under an opulent canopy.
Drops of some god's blood fill this shrine,
tease sense to forget the earth--and balance.
But veiled by sun-glitter,
couched on the last and richest cluster,
a metallic-green scarab stops me
short of sky, sending me back to earth-
chilled wine husbanded in the nook at the base of the tree.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, Fall 1992.
the single-shaft picking ladders are pulled
from leaves below. The marquis' men--
buckets brimming red--desperse as by signal,
leaving the straniero to finish a tree again.
In two hours they picked their outside areas thin
while I climbed in and slowly robbed the shadowed heart--
a novice against old hands at this rosary,
against antic dialect that rose and vied
without my part, jokes on me I'd no chance to divine.
But I laughed at what little I gathered
and how I struggled to beat the steady drum
of their cherries, flung in bucket bottoms,
measuring progress upward rung to rung.
I yearned for praise they'd long since turned from.
In the distance, the sweeping arms are silent
unburdening branches as in meditation--
and I am alone under an opulent canopy.
Drops of some god's blood fill this shrine,
tease sense to forget the earth--and balance.
But veiled by sun-glitter,
couched on the last and richest cluster,
a metallic-green scarab stops me
short of sky, sending me back to earth-
chilled wine husbanded in the nook at the base of the tree.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, Fall 1992.
Boarding at Porta Nuova, Verona
by Jonathan Eastman
Everyone on this trackside veranda
ignores the subject of waiting,
like the pigeons seem to ignore,
before they peck, bits of panini
scattered on the red-veined terrazzo.
In the case of knowing destination
we stay unruffled by distractions--cautious
with our glances, never letting anyone
discern our interest in the small risks
pigeons hazard as they circulate
just out of someone's way, or in the gray
locale coaches straying slowly into the sun
to stretch then and break parting
school children's shrill cascade of play.
Maybe we have lost the ability to say
whether we put on indifference to hide
a readiness fluttering in us to arrive
some place different, because
we are afraid that place will be the same as this--
a foreign station nowhere out of ourselves.
Maybe we think we're somehow safe
in holding back until the time comes to board.
But sometimes it's hard to ward off wondering
how we live so contained, how the tracks
wear bright from tremendous friction
heard on board as soft rhythmical clatter;
hard to keep from staring at the platform clock
to catch the visible advance of its large black arms;
sometimes we die to know how the pigeon feels
to burst into complexities of flight.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1986.
ignores the subject of waiting,
like the pigeons seem to ignore,
before they peck, bits of panini
scattered on the red-veined terrazzo.
In the case of knowing destination
we stay unruffled by distractions--cautious
with our glances, never letting anyone
discern our interest in the small risks
pigeons hazard as they circulate
just out of someone's way, or in the gray
locale coaches straying slowly into the sun
to stretch then and break parting
school children's shrill cascade of play.
Maybe we have lost the ability to say
whether we put on indifference to hide
a readiness fluttering in us to arrive
some place different, because
we are afraid that place will be the same as this--
a foreign station nowhere out of ourselves.
Maybe we think we're somehow safe
in holding back until the time comes to board.
But sometimes it's hard to ward off wondering
how we live so contained, how the tracks
wear bright from tremendous friction
heard on board as soft rhythmical clatter;
hard to keep from staring at the platform clock
to catch the visible advance of its large black arms;
sometimes we die to know how the pigeon feels
to burst into complexities of flight.
Published in The Chariton Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1986.