It occurs to me that I would like to write a poem about Naples.
Perhaps I have always wanted to do this, and only realized it just a moment ago,
but, alas, I have never been to Naples, and yet my desire to write about the place
becomes more insuperable by the second. I become convinced that my writing desk
is on the same latitude as Naples: I have only to lean back in my chair,
and I incline towards the city of my dreams, and in my dreams my feet
rest in Manhattan while my hair rustles against the wharves of Naples,
and the wharves are bristling with galleons, feluccas, sloops and schooners,—
and how blue the sea on which they sway and jostle, how blue the sky
above them, except for some small clumps of cloud so white they are like
roses that have seen ghosts! And one could wander forever in the streets
that are as narrow and crooked as the wrinkles on the face of a wise and beautiful old woman.
Here all the shop signs are like the titles of arias by Alessandro Scarlatti.
The streets and squares are always busy, yet no one is ever too hurried:
at the slightest opportunity a man or a woman of Naples will sit down with you
on some weathered marble doorstep and engage you in the most animated conversation
concerning art or politics, your origins, their mother, the latest songs or scandals.
A citizen of Naples will say: “Oh, you are from Brooklyn? I have a cousin there.
He tells me it is a very beautiful place.” He will say this out of pure courtesy.
In no other city have I seen so many fragrant pots of flowering bergamot,
or such luscious leaves of basil, or so many balconies overhung by noble bosoms.
In the late afternoon it is customary for the singers to leave the opera house,
and go about their business in full costume: here is the Orfeo of Monteverdi
haggling over the price of some pomegranates, and over there Donna Elvira
is sipping an espresso in a cafe while sharing a secret with a disheveled Desdemona;
Don Carlos leaves a haberdasher’s in a fury while Pinkerton enters a tobacconist’s,
and Melisande (still in character) weeps beside a baroque public fountain
and here is Poppaea, and Dido, and Ariadne, and Judith, and Violeta . . .
and there goes Madame Butterfly’s child eating a fruit like a setting sun
as he saunters down toward the waterfront. There, on the broad esplanade,
with its prodigous statuary, many restaurants are to be found,
and they are at once elegant and welcoming. During the heat of the day
their cool marble floors and gently rotating fans are a delight,
and in the evenings entire families go out to dine dressed in the finest clothes,
and how charming are the pink and white dresses of the young girls