Poem by Paul McMahon (Ireland)

Published in The Ofi Press issue 49

Sailors on the Banks of the Tiber

Eight a.m., early December, Rome.

I huddled in the frozen dawn

around the soup kitchen door

as the jostling crowd cursed

the false heat and slow rise of the sun.

When the door finally creaked open

we all shuffled in. Some entered

as they do everywhere, others were crouched over,

or thief-quick but everyone was smiling.

            *

In the food-line, a middle-aged prostitute

winked unconfident blue and red eyelids at me

before turning to the hatch, slamming the counter

until two arms and the reluctant tray

finally slipped through the faceless frame.

She turned away, shrugging her spoon through the soup,

working through the noodles and the softening bread.

            *

The queue thins,

as does everything.

            *

Even here some are only listened to

by an audience of eye-corners.

            *

Outside, the cobble is thawing,

deflowered and canine.

            *

In here, arthritis and broken bones act as weather stations,

twitching in changing humidity.

            *

Stories arrive, shouted over tables, through the din,

washed down with wood-wine.

            *

When the soup is gone

philosophers appear,

hemming and hawing

through puffed clouds of tobacco smoke.

            *

One old man at the table next to me

is silently shaking in shock,

his fingers grip the edge of his seat

in a doomed dovetail,

his crow’s eyes are shot –

he couldn’t take a joke:

five minutes ago

during a moment

of pin-drop silence

his table was violently slammed.

            *

The soup kitchen is still

echoing

with the booms

of homeless laughter.

            *

The shaking old man

is not alone at sea –

            *

all of us in this room

are drowned sailors

            *

washed up on the exposed

banks of the Tiber.