Appetite (16)

Had love turned aptitude?  Had decades
turned on satiety, regret?  On

cautionary lines and tool bearing, the romance
of lost but recoverable first children?

Is it you don't?, must?  And feed yourself?,
must have?   And what have I

made you here, besides a nod toward mealtimes,
a voice, and speaking, suspending these rooms

in space with speaking other voices, considering
where to concentrate, where to hang

a pseudonym or whisper alias?  The future's drawn
along in an abstracting sympathy,

a name, like a tight spring, unwinding away
through an old century, far,

and far enough, tempting me yet to think of it,
a plenty, say, or place called holy

for its presence in dry country, calling a people
to themselves, to be addressed and fed,

capably drawn and blessed and palpably invented,
placed by heart to tell, withstand affinities,

by "Hallowell," a voice to say which cheese
or recommend a vintage, arrange

these dressed interiors, these routes at once
ancestral, and extra-modern he thinks,

remembering Nice and Genoa, the exquisite
parities, the punctuations troubling.

 

© Robert Lietz