Maison d’aujourd’hui
Donald Hall
Paris Review, issue no. 150 (Spring 1999)
The night refills itself.
Limestone drops to the sea
that varies blue all day
between capes that curve
like a lover’s arms
to cherish tranquil waters.
Here on a stone bench
we can see the darkening
bay, its almost-still
soft skin. This morning
we drove among rock
villages and orchards
to visit Matisse's Chapel
with its carnal blues
and yellows. Underneath
our room an olive's
roots draw virgin oil
from the earth's body,
surging upward to leaves
silvery green and dark.
After siesta we throbbed
with the olive's thrust
and our bodies floated
as buoyant as the sea
that rolls inside us
tonight. Our joyous
flesh sighs, every cell
breathing gaily, alert
to storeys of pastel
stucco with tile roofs
and filigreed balconies,
to the setting sun
that toplights with gold
a Mediterranean cloud.
Last night we wept, knowing
that nothing will remain.
Now we sit idle, content
from breath to breath
in the house of today.
Across from our bench
a woman in a long black
smock closes the shutters
of her pink facade.
You said we’d move to Italy. What a statement. Has anyone ever felt this way before (?).
Most definitely. But the sugary sweet touch of you seems like it could never be replicated or repeated.
How delicate and bittersweet to have something that could never be played out again.
How rare and extraordinary. How lucky of me. Saccharine.
Amongst reality it seems ridiculous. But is that just reality speaking or our actuality?
To accept things as doomed is out of the question and impossible to accept until it happens and then we’re left to our prideful ways of proclaiming that we always saw the end we were just martyring for the sanctity of the other person. Right.
Highly convincing.
And if I started a joke, would you finish it (?).
To be laying in the mid-afternoon sun, shifting around trying to make you want me, it’s torture. It’s a game. A fun game, but still a game at that. Is that the secret of longevity? To always leave the other guessing? To be on the same page, but never admitting where you actually stand?
Or is it all a perfect portrait of a terrible, toxic relationship just waiting to happen.
Great life experience, I guess.
And for that unknowing I’ll accept and dive headfirst even though I’ve done so already.
I can pretend to have control for as long as I feel comfortable, but–let’s be honest–I’m already packing. Italy here we come!