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John Martone

Tufo
2019
Copyright © 2019 John Martone
johnmartone@gmail.com
Postmark
We perish because we cannot join the beginning
to the end.
— Alcmaeon of Croton
 Parmenides
finally see —
the one thing
you can do

~5~
I don’t need that lamp this morning

~6~
back of my mind
an anchoress

~7~
a caul
the sense
of touch

~8~
yes that is
sunlight’s scent
presence

~9~
the statue turns a bit
and faces me with open arms

the statue’s drapery

folds of an ancient quantum field

~ 10 ~
subzero
the windowlatch glints

~ 11 ~
like anyone else
I make a home where I don’t belong

~ 12 ~
split-rail fence —
the house beyond
half-timbered

~ 13 ~
 after supper
Mendeleev on the linoleum table

~ 14 ~
trash blown into
a winter yard

the house
full of belongings

~ 15 ~
silence
after — before
the snowplow

salt
my front steps
a pox

~ 16 ~
pajamas folded
in winter sun
room to myself

~ 17 ~
gone now
his radio all that’s left

~ 18 ~
 too soon
long leggèd fly
from my potted fig
dances on the window

you want nature?

I’ll give you nature —

~ 19 ~
bottiglia vuota
sul tavolo sghembo
foglie di fico

freddo polare
le ombre un altro
strato di ghiaccio

~ 20 ~
buio d’inverno
la mia icona
balugina

~ 21 ~
non più nei Sassi
il mulo è dentro me
dunque — parla!

mulo sfinito
testardo chiamato
l’anima

~ 22 ~
gravità quantistica
sono un sostantivo fuori posto

~ 23 ~
pomeriggio
un vecchio e suo figlio disabile seduti fuori la casa
sopra il porto

~ 24 ~
le bottiglie
sul davanzale lì anche io

foglie di palma
piegate
come si fece anni fa

~ 25 ~
questa luce
la mia camera
galleggia via

~ 26 ~
smoke from winter chimneys —
the dream recedes

hoarfrost
more and more dimensions

~ 27 ~
seventy years
the soul
his inner mule

a mule’s breath
my own nostrils steaming

~ 28 ~
shotgun
on his shoulder
he’s speaking dialect

~ 29 ~
bread begets a knife

~ 30 ~
 despite the stones
I ploughed a dream’s parallel rows

salt for the front steps

my fig tree safe in the house behind me

~ 31 ~
 jar of olives
a dim green planet in the cabinet’s void

weeks not seeing a soul I greet perfect strangers

~ 32 ~
Giacomo Gaglione
fifty years paralyzed
and I get up to make coffee

~ 33 ~
wheelchair —
must be Francis
or Elijah

that neighbor who

once helped me lift

my cast iron sink

now he’s dead

~ 34 ~
winter vine still
clinging to the fence
a human form

~ 35 ~
shelter
someone

behind
the words

~ 36 ~
subzero
sorting
onions

~ 37 ~
 out of nowhere
zippered parkas marvel at a planet

seven syllables
astronomical distance

~ 38 ~
 token
I have a slip of paper
winter crow

cezanne
those roofs inside me

~ 39 ~
 long time past
starting each day with the life of a saint

~ 40 ~
the fullness of time
mother appears for a moment

~ 41 ~
same brown corduroys
this winter too —
I’m fond of life

~ 42 ~
bread and olives at a table
and what to make
of his hands

overalls
hanging from a nail even older

~ 43 ~
the spirit
always passes in an hour

I’m grateful for that hour

~ 44 ~
they aren’t there
anymore

with the soles

of their polished

black shoes
worn-through

teardrops of peeled garlic

crushed

~ 45 ~
 wine-dark
the old
man’s legs

wine-carafe
stoppered —

rich red
supper

table
silence

~ 46 ~
I didn’t know what to make of their gift

~ 47 ~
I take off my glasses
in morning mist
it’s perfect

~ 48 ~
subatomic
elegant

miniscule
handwriting

I wake up with a workman’s hands

~ 49 ~
hands full of pain turn on a lamp

~ 50 ~
February 2
a single bird changes the season

cypresses
precisely here and there

~ 51 ~
some yellow trees
in the photo
prove it was autumn

Pompeian photos
spilled on the floor
a wine jar

~ 52 ~
Address Book
handwritten back when —
land of the dead

come back to visit

parks and that deli
the hospice

~ 53 ~
hands flapping someone disabled flies off

~ 54 ~
bottle
of pills
the table top’s grain

whether or not
the world’s safe
sometone spins

~ 55 ~
in the shade
only a bird nest of snow left

~ 56 ~
a few hours in the car to those woods

the fog lifting I light a fire

~ 57 ~
that perfume
again today
communion

~ 58 ~
on a bus
passing Cumae
without a word

books on shelf
a dark room

his personal
underworld

~ 59 ~
limping
out of
a myth

~ 60 ~
a wool cap cocked to the right
and he limps

sits outside in his chair

remember him that way

~ 61 ~
his garland of figs a circle of light

~ 62 ~
a humble backbone rises to greet brother sun

~ 63 ~
Pompeii
would I had stayed there

~ 64 ~
Paestum
enormous temples no one entered

honeycomb
the gaps in
his journal

~ 65 ~
the beautiful guide
asks if you feel at home

small birds too my morning

~ 66 ~
the cerebral cortex
a landscape

someday we’ll see

landscape to landscape

~ 67 ~
mother
placed me in a basket
on the dark sea
of light

~ 68 ~
it’s going to end with an image

~ 69 ~
mom and my sisters —
all the dogwood
held that summer

the old place

3 doors
a tight
corner

~ 70 ~
legs crossed
at the table
under a Cinzano umbrella

they linger on the steps

of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
smoking

~ 71 ~
a small glass of water
and I happily wait
forever

~ 72 ~
 each hilltop city
the invisible globe
of a language

the accomplishment
Brunelleschi’s dome in a pair of closed eyes

~ 73 ~
the smell of laundry
fluttering down from upper stories

down an alley
coming upon the cathedral

~ 74 ~
stained glass
without my glasses

paradiso canto i

~ 75 ~
 mandate
a plexiglass floor above the ruins

~ 76 ~
every little movement
it’s splendid to stand
on a queue in the sun

~ 77 ~
standing dead center
in the baptistery
look up —

~ 78 ~
stare at the lamp
it’s every lost book

no story no thread the needle’s eye clearly

~ 79 ~
 Theogonis

close-knit
coverlet
of earth

I read Heraclitus
then dream they’ve stolen my car

~ 80 ~
a thousand pages
John of the Cross
suddenly weightless

~ 81 ~
you learn
from them

they are
no more

you learn
from them

~ 82 ~
lentils
the rain
outside

~ 83 ~
bowl
and spoon

elbows
bent

lentil
soup

~ 84 ~
winter leaves
from the tree
full of light

after all these years

there’s another
room in back

~ 85 ~
a sentence
in pieces
how fitting

badly drawn
line won’t turn

into a circle —
oh it’s a vine

~ 86 ~
day
break
dream

child
hood
friend

~ 87 ~
a sprained back
and winter crows
won’t let up

wearing a knit cap

in my room
winter sun

~ 88 ~
snowdrops
light through
the pines

~ 89 ~
year’s first
violets
a dream

~ 90 ~
lunar white
larvas feeling
earth’s unfrozen —

~ 91 ~
spring beauties where we didn’t plant them

it’s a bright room with dirty windows

~ 92 ~
 sit patiently
till the light
leaves its mark

another season approaches with footprints

~ 93 ~
a long end to winter zeno’s crocuses

the old place

a wire fence raised in your absence

~ 94 ~
hotel rooftop
Vesuvius that spring

Hera’s huge temple

at Paestum and you
a droplet of amber

~ 95 ~
 the wooden machines
and temple’s goddess long gone

Diels and Kranz

fragments carried around by a fragment

~ 96 ~
life-vest
in a closet’s depths

~ 97 ~
waiting in silence
there’s the last poem

sun
the width of your footprint

~ 98 ~
a small sail
neatly folded

in the drawer
with his shirts

his back pain reminds him of sailing

~ 99 ~
from mast to oar
to walking stick
no other way

chiaroscuro
his interior —

a candle
guttering

~ 100 ~
 Bay of Naples

a good day
seeing the dock
from which they left

fibonacci
I’ll never get out of my shell

~ 101 ~
being
a mandible centuries hence

~ 102 ~
Spanish Quarter —
all those masks
a warm evening’s joy

Via Toledo

needed
a scarf

to look
the part

got lost
in it

~ 103 ~
lesson

those children
out so late

well-lit road
to the sea

~ 104 ~
 Neapolis

not of this world

waiting for the volcano to flower

another shop —
celestial blue
handblown glass globes from that fire

~ 105 ~
dream wouldn’t
let you sleep —

walked into
an excavation

lost in that city

follow a cemetery wall
completely around

~ 106 ~
Galleria Umberto I
the glass roof seen from hotel windows

mausoleum
jumbled

box of
photos

~ 107 ~
trust fragments more than the perfect thing

~ 108 ~
a red thread
where you find it

~ 109 ~
bony legs
gotten through
another winter

~ 110 ~
when you let go
wind rain cold sun and earth
are persons

~ 111 ~
crows return
geese return

the mice have

left my house

~ 112 ~
more bird songs than windowsills now

~ 113 ~
a house wren
describes the
circumference

~ 114 ~
v
decades later a postmark

~ 117 ~