I ask for symbols and you deliver them.
An Iowa shirt, building sign, cup of grappa
at the hotel before an evening walk,
mad pyramid I went to touch but stopped,
wide street by a race track, fragments of ghost,
moment on the bridge with statues flying
and the river ruins glowed—
I remember how they dragged bodies
to the banks, a pile of bones down there,
Melville said the drowned support the earth.
We ate roast lamb, potatoes, chicory greens
washed down with vino rosso from Lazio
to make us whole again, yet what drove us
far from home, a spirit cannot know.
—
From the unpublished collection The Muse Demanded Lyrics by Lucas Hunt
