There's coffee in the wind, tobacco smoke
and garlic, olive oil and lemon.
Fires burn
coolly
through the day,
the water boils at zero heat.
It's always almost time for Sunday dinner,
with the boys
all
home: dark
Nello,
who became his cancer and refused to breathe;
her little Gino, who went down the mines
and whom they had to dig
all
week to find;
that willow, Tony, who became so thin
he blew away; then Julius and Leo,
who survived the others by their wits alone
but found no reason, after
all
was said,
for hanging on. They'll take their places
in the sun today at her high table,
as the antique beams light up the plates,
the faces that have lately come to shine.
George Ellenbogen
THE END OF THE AFFAIR
We arrange the Meissen between us
(tundish for you, tureen pushed to my side),
dividing the final rags of a marriage
from an affair several years dead.
Our hands shepherd transparencies
one by one by light to view
until birthdays and vacations fall
like sheared fleece upon the hardwood floor.
The books fall more readily
into rank , soldiering stiffly
for what we used at night
to keep from one another's sight.
