In One Act, Three Scenes
l
Rudolpho and Marcello are throwing Rudolpho's poetry
in the fire like, Who cares? He'll write more, and then
Schaunard and Colline drop by, and everyone
is eating and drinking and going on about life
like characters in an epic novel,
and I suddenly realize how long it's been
since I've lived with men, not since college,
how much fun it was: the large, cheap meals,
and all that exaggerated posturing, and then I hear Mimi
coughing and hacking, dragging herself up the stairs,
and all I can think about how I'll sometimes
catch my wife straightening up
the several versions of herself
she made to please me, touching them
with the same tenderness she reserved
for wayward relatives. She explained it
to me once: You look friendly, but you're not.
You fool people.
II
Dove Wayne? my son says, and we can't stop laughing.
Yes, I say, Where is Wayne? We could be lovers
for all I know. Why else would I be on my patio
laughing with someone half my age, someone
whose library consists of Scarne on Cards,
whose car has a sock in its gas tank, leaking oil
on my driveway, making my neighbors nervous.
But listen, something hopelessly beautiful
keeps propelling me towards partners
I should know better about until
someone inside me walks out,
nails the Fourteen Points
to my forehead, tells me
what I always knew
but couldn't quite put into words:
when it comes to mating, even the salmon have it easier.
III
Ah, yes, Rudolpho and Mimi, who can resist them,
soaring into one another like they do, but it all
seems so far away, not at all like the life
I keep spreading out for Puccini to see
in this little espresso bar in Torino,
where Giacomo and I are both getting
terribly bent on grappa and I'm staring down
at the Carrera marble top like it was a street map,
getting more and more stubborn about it, telling Puccini
there are other musics, that someone
has to write them, these sad, awkward songs,
and he's nodding patiently into the bottom of his glass
like he's honestly considering the proposition,
and then he looks up at me from underneath
that black slouch hat of his and says, Sure, sure ,
it's music, but listen, who’d want to sing it?