Wordsword

I love voile more

than I love olive.

But violet, I love it

more than I love

voile.

O evil! O

vile! Such violence —

when all I ever wanted

were violins, to find

the violets I’ve lost.

Cross your eyes and complaint

become compliant.

Precious begets

precarious.

Amen. I know now

you didn’t mean

to say his name.

Eternity’s an entirety.

A word’s a sword.

And I’ve forgot

is

to forgive.

Adagio

Florence. Dante’s town. One final meal

at La Beatrice before a morning flight home.

Strolling together after dinner, we heard

music, a lone violin playing as dusk

gathered in the square outside the Uffizi.

The piazza almost empty.

A few students. A wandering dog.

Dwarfed by the massive renaissance statuary,

how awed we were — the sky a crimson wound,

Albinoni’s adagio crying out to us

as if to all lovers everywhere.

We sat together on a stone bench and listened.

The violin’s rising and falling notes

filling the night with something part sorrow,

part joy. A fragment in each of us knowing

we could die here, at this moment,

and it would be all right.

Peter  Pereira’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and in  the 2007 Best American Poetry. His poetry has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and American Life in Poetry; as well as on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. His books include  The Lost Twin (Grey Spider 2000), Saying the World (Copper Canyon, 2003), and What’s Written on the Body, newly  released by Copper  Canyon in 2007. He is a  family physician at High Point Community Clinic, and lives in Seattle with his partner  Dean Allan.