A Naked Document
Remember Pisa? Of course you do.
I slipped into Museo dell’Opera Duomo
while you sipped your
espresso
like a heedful
antelope at a waterhole,
glanced once at a sanguine
Tuscan
who’d chat you up to
god’s eternity had he
not learned of your
absent companion.
Remember that tiny
photograph
I had shown you the
previous night,
of a creature cast in
bronze
half eagle half dog,
we thought,
of an unknown breed?
Today, I learnt that the
hippogriff
had been made hollow
to amuse the pre-Islamic
courtiers
with its beak’s
jingle-jangle
although less
plausible theories place it
in some city’s water
fountain. Anyway,
I am telling you all
this not because
you’ll latch on to much
all curled up, foetus
like,
or because griffins
are more important
than your splitting
headache.
I do like it though
when your head nods
against my rigid,
rounded chest. I like it
when your trying to
pay attention
is a make-believe I am
not talking
to the walls
exclusively.
Correct me if I am
wrong
but now I think, as I
thought then
as we sauntered back to
the car
past the pastel house
fronts,
that going separate
ways
in those couple of Pisan
hours
did us both a big-time
favour.
