What a life a dish towel has in your hands.

giornata profumata e fresca


"She had a look and manner people took to be unconventional in a certain way, a kind of reclusiveness in a crowd. She wore soft clothes. She draped herself in casual layers, a smallish woman half buried in pastels. There was always the idea she was in quiet retirement from some fear or pain. She bought factory-outlet moccasins, never wore jewelry, kept snapshots of her mother in favorite books. People thought she was a canned-soup heiress who painted seascapes with birds. She ate soft food, spoke softly, with a slight huskiness, a sexiness. She was very sexy, at forty-seven. There was still that smoky little thing about her. The sexy swaying walk, the dark voice. She had a dry way of delivering friendly insults directly into people's chests. She walked softly swaying into a room and you could sense the anticipation in the group. They began preparing their laughter before she said a word" (124).

Stirling Moss: A Nodding Acquaintance with Death: "'Yes, terribly, because I can't see in the ultimate what there can be of happiness. I know that to some people, achievement in business, in work, is happiness. To me it's not; it's a fulfillment, but not necessarily happiness. It's a pleasure, but pleasure isn't happiness. My idea of happiness seems utopian to me, and it may seem absurd to you. It is to be married and have two or three children and a house in the country, if you like, and to go away for two weeks on holiday--and, most of all, most importantly, to be able to accept that life as happiness. Do you understand? To be able to accept it, that's the whole heart of the matter ...I keep my finger in the dike; it's not going to patch the bloody thing, but at least it's stopping the water pouring in. I'm waiting for my maturity to come to me, and I am doing what I can to bring it. I don't know if one ever feels happiness or if contentment is the maximum we can hope for. As I said, I'm not unhappy. If I were to be killed tomorrow, I wouldn't feel that thirty-two of my thirty-two years had been unhappy..." (208).

The Blue Grotto________________________________for Mona Van Duyn


The boatman rowed into
That often-sung impasse.
Each visitor foreknew
A floor of lilting glass,
A vault of rock, lit blue.

But here we faced the fact.
As misty expectations
Dispersed, and wavelets thwacked
In something like impatience,
The point was to react.

Alas for characteristics!
Diane fingered the water,
Don tested the acoustics
With a paragraph from Pater.
Jon shut his eyes--these mystics--

Thinking his mantra. Jack
Came out with a one-liner,
While claustrophobiac
Janet fought off a minor
Anxiety attack.

Then from our gnarled (his name?)
Boatman (Gennaro!) burst
Some local, vocal gem
Ten times a day rehearsed,
It put us all to shame:

The astute sob, the kiss
Blown in sheer routine
Unself-consciousness
Before one left the scene...
Years passed, and I wrote this.

--James Merrill