Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
From this distance in time,
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,
but it was only
the usual gray rock
turning the usual green
when drenched by the sea.
The sea drenched the rock
at our feet all day,
and kept tearing away
flake after flake.
One night you dreamed
you were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile,
and trying to pull
off the barnacles with your hands.
We wished our two souls
might return like
gulls
to the rock.
In
the end,
the water was too cold for us.
FLORENCE
(For Mary McCarthy)
I long for the black ink,
cuttlefish, April, Communists
and brothels of Florence–
everything, even the British
fairies who haunted the
hills,
even the chills and fever
that came one a month
