AS A BLIND MAN TRAVELS
The Western Wall is notes perfumed
with a love two thousand years wide.
I accidently brush hands pressed
with sweat and hope.
The bazaar of Marrakech
is leather and sour sumac.
The vendors’ ululations are
my call to morning prayer.
Though I haggle with no one,
I am never alone.
As I’m carried away in a whoosh
of motors, the streets of Trastevere
hold me tight and smell of tripe.
A laundress with the voice of a toad
barks romanesco at a man
from Bangladesh who hawks roses:
They are both Rome to me.
I can feel the cobblestones sinking
and hear the lagoon erode the gondolas,
but my bigoli in salsa whisper
in reassurance: There will always be
a Venice in my memories.
The Prague Clock of the Old Town Square
sounds like the face of a friend
as it rings out the places of the stars.
The underground trains speed
toward prosperity, the intercom
voices are a confident polka.
The salesmen of Soviet berets
sing dirges; their nostalgia
is their currency and their deceit.
Prague is the city of the future
of the past.
Cities without sight are
Luna Parks for the mind.
BIO:
Raymond Alexander Turco is a poet and playwright born in Hackensack, NJ. He writes poems in English and Italian and has a special affinity for European history, surrealism, magical realism, and absurdism. The author of nine stage plays, he has published his poetry in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and with Bordighera Press.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 