NAPLES, PASSER-BY

But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm–T.S. Eliot, Whispers of Immortality

I..

Tribal music from a department-store,
ice cream children, prams and fathers.
On neck and forehead, some faint blue
water from a bronze, public fountain.
I will bear alone the red sirocco.

II..

The vesuvius (bitter about
his constipations), speaks:
“Ask the peasants of Nola and the goat
cheese in their charred, broken stomachs,
ask the grey-haired nobles of Pompei and
display their ruined, ash-filled skulls,
once cracked by their own cooked brains,
when hit by my frisky mighty outflow,
that arrived quickly at the shore and dripped
quietly into the reluctant, raging sea”
Look at him and take a pill

.III.

Amidships with the fishermen, the bouncing
fenders, tanned hands grasping, we stop & float
above a swarm of fishes, almost still,
frozen, then shivers, awakes and flees, like
quicksilver-tears fleeing
the heat of silly hands

IV.

The pigeons slip on wet patio stones.
We hide in the cream-coloured chapel
and your eyes turn black; single, puny
prayers, unable to argue with the waterfall,
running over thumb-thick ancient moss.

–Michele Lamberti