English as a Second Language and Other Poems

The Billy Graham Elegy

Nobody much mentions the floor of the Sistine Chapel
that’s touched so many more than the docents or the ceiling
or the premonitions on the wall. Come papal loafer
and heathen sneaker, come Ked and Ecco mingling dog
shit off the viale e strada on this scuffed stone nobody
mentions much as the tourist kids keep calling it
“The Sixteen Chapel” as if it were one more middling outlet
in a protracted franchise, which it is, which must be why
the Lord doesn’t appear here much more than elsewhere,
retired as he must be to Ostia as is custom among Romans.
One can’t, after all, be messiah forever. Eventually,
the ball club needs a fresh message, a fresher messenger,
fella in a silk suit maybe, a Carolina drawl, maybe
another mother appointed chairwoman of the Pietà.
But we don’t think much of home among the Alfa
Romeos of the military police here where we’re unafraid
anyone will shoot us, and Rome feels comprehensible
for once. I know how to say, “Vorrei due coronetti,”
or, “Mia moglie é incinta,” or, “Dove il Bancomat?”
Ho troppo moneta for once in our lives, and the taxi
drivers of evening tell me, “Your Italian is so good,
where do you come from?” But the taxi drivers
of morning say, “Your Italian is so bad, di dove sei?”
I don’t tell either we’re from the outcome, a new world
and latter result, that all this artistry ends in half a nation
mourning a holy mogul in a circus tent, and mercifully
nobody there comes back from the dead.