Etruscan Places

1. Volterra—Twilight

Sunset fades; the golden citadel
now darkens. Dusty blue, the sky awaits
its first few stars. He places a lace shawl
about her shoulders, then anticipates
just how the evening might unfold—beauty
and cruelty finely balanced. 'You seem distant'.
She smiles, blows him a kiss, (he feels, from duty
or maybe misplaced pity). Still, persistent,
he talks at length of their museum visit,
then reads aloud from 'Etruscan Places'.
His voice trails off, as if to say—'What is it?'
Remembering the death masks' vivid faces,
trinkets stolen from a king's sarcophagus,
she says, 'the place reminded me of us'.

2. Peach Melba

The Texas matriarch three tables down,
her chosen subject—Michelangelo
explains that David's vaguely bilious frown,
big head, small dick, if viewed from down below
'look perfectly proportional.' Installed
discreetly in their corner, stifling laughter,
the couple listen in. 'Do you recall',
the woman asks, 'the line that comes straight after
"in the room the women come and go?"'
He smirks, then ordering dessert (Peach Melba),
leans back; it's good, he feels, she's in the know.
'Tomorrow,' she suggests, 'lets visit Elba'.
He nods, observing with suppressed alarm
the serpent bracelet clasped to her white arm.

3. The City of The Dead—His Sonnet

Now after dark they take the stony track
zig-zagging through an ancient olive grove
to reach the citadel, its ramparts black
against the gauze-gray sky. From high above
the shrunken moon rains down its tarnished light
upon the silent town. Though neither dare
disturb its brittle quietness, tonight,
as shadows drift like moths across the bare
chalk hills, they sense the silence's hushed scream.
The breeze is warm; the moonlight, cold as frost
illuminates a plundered tomb, a dream
of plenty, and ancient innocence lost.
They walk apart, she slowly moves ahead
enamoured with the city of the dead.

4. A postcard for mother

For Mother, the Etruscan figurine?'
Bea, prone in Savasana, hints—'Too phallic,
Mom might prefer the tacky vineyard scene.'
'Is everything you say some smartaleck
cliché?' 'Bullshit! Just tell her you're OK,'
she grins, 'it's not the Pulitzer committee.'
He writes, 'arrived Volterra, noon Sunday,
now 1.00 am. Too hot for sleep, tho. B.
can work, I cannot find the words, surprise,
surprise.' Unsure quite how he should sign off:
not 'love'—perpetuating well-versed lies;
'Your loving son'—too public schoolboy toff.
He settles for a stark initial Q
but vacillates between one 'x' or two.

5. Moon shot

In her element, crouched behind a tripod,
Bea points the telephoto at the moon;
'We'll need a timed exposure here'. It's odd
the casual way she seeks to importune
whoever is on hand to serve her process.
He thinks—what was it the New Yorker said?
“Eschewing mere depiction, Beatrice
demurs from taking photographs, instead
performs photography, and apprehends
the world that's taken her.” 'Focus!
for fuck's sake'. The moon obliges. He pretends
that Artemis, alone on Mount Olympus,
puts down her bow exclusively to shine
into the empty lens—a light divine.

6. Maremma Dusk—Her Landscape

Too hot for sleep. Observe Bea work; lips pursed,
brow furrowed, she sits cross-legged upon the bed
and stares into her Powerbook, immersed.
Maremma Dusk, umbrella pines, the Med
suffused in yellow light; black cattle graze
amid the salt marshes. She clicks invert;
the lime green grass, the gold, rococo haze
morph instantly to mauve; the earth reverts
to pre-diluvian blue. She pastes a row
of sunflowers from Yahoo; reversing hue,
flamboyant petals pale to indigo.
'It's finished, now let's sleep'. He thinks, 'Are you
a charlatan, my cool flirtatious thief;
and I your fool, naive beyond belief?'

7. Tragedy

He wakes her with a gentle kiss. 'It's late,
the Traghetti leave at noon'. She stumbles
towards the shower. Beatrice looks so great
half-naked in his torn T-shirt he mumbles
some obscenity. she squeaks
in Barry Gibb falsetto, 'the feeling's
gone and you can't go on;' the pop song speaks
their sorrow. Driving southwards, tyres squealing,
Bea flings the Alfa through each hairpin bend.
They squabble. 'Watch that Vespa!' 'Are we lost?'
'Well read the bloody map.' It's not the end
he'd drafted—bittersweet, yet still star-crossed.
Livorno docks—they part. He drives to Rome,
re-writes His Sonnet as he flies back home.

I worked on this sequence for months, finally posting the 'whole caboodle' in November 2005. After 'Barcelona' this is probably the work I feel most proud of, mainly because I  feel the characters are believable and the thing works as a an intense piece of flash fiction in verse. Beatrice and 'Q' - Quentin, in full, feel like friends and I'm very fond of them. As ever, the gestation of the poems comes a collection of fragments.

The central characters first occurred to me in the Stazione Marittima in Livorno. This must have been in July 2002 on our way to Corsica. For a while we shared a myth within the family that the very best pasta dishes in Italy were served up by three 'signora' of girth in the Stazione cafeteria everyday, at noon precisely. We had a drink in the cafeteria before the arrival of the large steaming bowls of pasta. As I was drinking my cappuccino I noticed a couple, maybe in their late twenties, a few tables away from us having an almighty row, but in whispers. After a few minutes the girl stalked-off leaving the young man who did his best not to appear crestfallen; he just finished his drink, picked up a small hold-all, and exited quietly. Neither of them were anywhere to be seen on the crossing to Bastia later in the afternoon. 'I wonder what happened there?' I thought to myself, then forgot about the incident.

The cafeteria, Livorno Stazione Marittima

A couple of years later Gill bought me a really nice hardback copy of D.H Lawrence's travel book, Twilight in Italy and Sea in Sardinia. This reminded me just how much I enjoyed his travelogues; later I tracked down 'Etruscan Places' and re-read that too. Lawrence's nick-name for his wife, Frieda, was 'the queen bee'.  I knew, when the story started to form in my head, that the female character had to be called Bea. Some of the landscapes and details of the places are purloined from our own Etruscan journeys. The scene in the moonlight beneath the walls of Volterra and the  'Michelangelo' conversation in the restaurant are pure invention. We've never hired an Alfa either for that matter, maybe that bit is wish fulfillment!

Volterra - the view west towards the coast

The bare hills below Volterra's ramparts.

There are a number of tensions or  'dialectics' within the poems; the most interesting one is technical, between 'his sonnet' and 'her landscape'. I wanted 'Q' to typify the 'hopeless romantic' - intense. pretentious and engaged, he is absorbed and slowly destroyed by both his relationship with Bea and his art. In contrast, 'Bea' is cool, a savvy technician in control of what Americans call, 'her process'. This focus by turns repels, intrigues, exasperates, then finally, defeats Q.