Margherita of Savoy

by J. Tarwood

After Fidalgo

Let things happen, this time for real.
Let’s not get lost again on the journey
in big or small ways.
From Torino take the pùllman,
then, stepping off,
walk through San Donato
till you pass the Roma-blue
picture palace.
I won’t look for you.

It will be night.
Soon as dark makes itself at home,
your face will be illuminated
by the orange light of a Livorno tram.
A bright city
will lead us to revolution,
that moment of happiness.
Japan: Earth anchors in trembling.
Communism allows us
to meet, its success its failure;
we’ll meet
in cities so far away,
in poems so distant.

A little more, and you’ll be with me.
Word for word, we remember
the language that raised us.

Definitely, defiantly, we have stayed put,
and that distinguishes
our hatred
from the hatred of others. . .
If I have bothered explaining,
it’s so you understand I could
go anywhere,
and that—as you said one day—
Geography saved me!

Follow a little more, and you’ll be home.
In the morning, open a window
to see the snow you rode over today.
We have lived too long alone.
We will learn with difficulty

the art of moving
without troubling each other,
but that will already be
part of the way back.

J. Tarwood has been a dishwasher, a community organizer, a medical archivist, a documentary film producer, an oral historian, and a teacher. After a life spent in East Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, he currently lives in China. He has published six books: The Cats in Zanzibar, Grand Detour, And For The Mouth A Flower, What The Waking See, The Sublime Way, and The World At Hand. He has always been an unlikely man in unlikely places.