Читать книгу Chord - Rick Barot - Страница 11

LOOKING AT THE ROMANS

in the museum, the heavy marble busts

on their white plinths, I recognize one likeness

as my uncle, the retired accountant

whose mind, like a conquered country, is turning

into desert, into the dust of forgotten things.

The white head of an old man, big as a god,

its short curled hair still rich

as matted grass, is my grandmother,

a Roman on her deathbed, surrounded

by a citizenry of keening, her breaths rising out

of the dark of a well, the orange medicine bottles

massed like an emergency on the table.

The delicate face of the serious young man

is another uncle, the one who lost

his friends when a plane hit their aircraft carrier,

the one who dropped pomegranate fires

on the scattering villagers, on the small

brown people who looked like him.

One bust is of a noblewoman, the pleats

of her toga articulated into silky marble folds,

her hair carved into singular strands:

she is the aunt who sends all her money home,

to lazy sons and dying neighbors.

Another marble woman is my other aunt,

the one who grows guavas and persimmons,

the one who dries salted fish on her garage roof,

as though she were still mourning

the provinces. Here is the cousin who is a priest.

Here is the cousin who sells drugs.

Here is the other grandmother, her heart still

skilled at keeping time. Here is my mother

in the clear pale face of a Roman’s wife,

a figure moving softly, among flowers and slaves.