Volume III Archive

Julie Larios

Circling St. Peter’s

She was in the Pincio eating a panini,
watching the wind and meeting
the challenge of Rome that way

when "Come" said God's sparrow
who had landed on the bust of Giotto.
And she came flying, turned

part-angel (the older kind, without wings,
not sweet, but the be-not-afraid kind, inducing
several onlookers' terror.)

She landed at St. Peter's feet first, bought
a souvenir basilica from a foreign peddler, saw
an obelisk with hieroglyphs but no Nile near.

Saw and considered the tempo of the colonnade,
the space between the columns, the rhythm that made
marble and a human heartbeat equal Beauty.

Saw and considered the closed Porta Santa,
knowing better than to knock with a non-papal hand, not
in an un-Holy Year, with no keyhole to squeeze through,

she being half-angel for the moment but no part camel
and no part of the Holy Door being a needle.
And wasn't she pleased to be half-angel?

After all, some are blond, their bodies pale white,
glum and graceful, like Petrarch's Laura, bright
muse, and Italian poems don't lie about angels,

though English poems are all-on-earth-we-need-to-know
about urns. Still, our heroine flew back to the Pincio
with that sparrow and wondered,

"In Truth, did Keats come to Rome
for Beauty, lie in his bed dying with no desire for home?
Some pilgrims change into angels or, like gnats, are air-born.

But I like being human. There are ripening apples
and Eden enough for me in Seattle
in my own green garden."

And finishing her panini, she left the sparrow
on Giotto's bust above the Piazza del Popolo
with its view of empire and the Vatican dome

and she walked, restored, down the hill, down the Corso,
considering the new religion of her own weight, her torso
footed, legged, armed, her head decaying, yes, but no ruin yet.

 

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