Old Tourist in a Roman Restaurant
No one so lost as you, old traveller,
faking adventure. Too late, too late.
Love will not find you at café tables.
No revelation lies in wait.
Tend to your garden, old peripatetic,
study the blue in your own clear sky.
Fra Angelico’s skies were lovely.
Yours would suffice for such an eye.
If you had stayed at home, old vagrant,
you could have watched a spider weave
golden traps for careless blunderers.
Nobody here is aware you grieve.
Restless, you sit in this bright, synthetic
copy of places you used to share.
Notice the absence of taste and feeling?
All that you want is asleep elsewhere.
When she was seated across the table,
then you were someone and so was she.
Back where you come from your life has meaning.
Here there is only eternity.
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