Pebbles

Hamstrung by pain and silliness
we hobbled the martyr trail to mass:
"Claudia, just this sharp one—
under my little toe — it's killing me!'
If suffering accepted brought down
grace, what price this chosen
agony of stones?
(No one told of the suffering
that squats for years on your shoulders,
destroys all memory of grace.)
But mostly, in those days,
it was lolling on beds at Claudia's place.
We read film star magazines, talked
of her older sisters — all stylish
and grown up and complicated.
At meals there were arguments
and grapes, the smell of olive oil.
In that home, I lived out
suppressed desires: taught myself
my first and only piano piece;
read, with a sense of hollow sin,
A Certain Smile: such a thin book,
her face so pale on the cover…
No answers there! Oh, but to know
what Giovanna and Renata knew!
(About love bites, say, which almost
made me faint — lust-bruises!
beast-marks on the neck!)
But they thought Carousel
was crap — that really hurt…
Things were almost as
they should have been, then,
I now see:
intimations of an ease in life,
truth mixed with warmth,
a sensual honesty.