Europe in 1914

During an idyllic afternoon, 
a Latin professor, dressed 
in soft beige, quotes her 
favorite wild swans from Coole. 
Dreamily, I slip past her 
and other speakers to a school 
flip map slightly out of view— 
the green F R A N C E creamed peas, 
a yellow plain basket 
for S P A I N  P O R T U G A L, 
a pale tin of sardines. 
She now reads Horace in Latin 
the ancient lyrics carrying 
me by cool Roman tombs 
the spell broken only when 
we return to her Anglican voice. 
I make out the shrimp pink 
of B R I T A I N so far away, 
cool and rainy assuming W A L E S 
S C 0 T L A N D sulk close by. 
Rolling across the great mass 
of old Europe, I want to write 
bold proletariat letters but 
just then she turns, slightly, 
makes a last selection, her most 
favorite, "The Moose," delicate 
fingers tracing the chilly 
road the great beast has not 
yet crossed, yet still I want 
R U S S I A the black ink 
running into so many rivers 
flowing through the S and the A. 
P E R S I A, split pea to the south, t
he dark whale below the Black Sea 
T U R K I S H  E M P I R E 
shaped like a hound's mouth 
ready to devour the tiny green 
morsel of B U L G A R I A, 
the outer islands of G R E E C E, 
acrid smell of moose and gasoline 
filling the stage, stormy afternoon 
of G E R M A N Y still waiting 
news of the assassination. 
The second speaker draws me 
back, his theme this afternoon 
love and death, opening with 
Sonnet 29, yet somewhere, ballooning 
across Europe, lost in the old 
brightness, I hear a man weeping, 
apologizing for love, trembling, 
saying we'd move right along to 
Emily D., if that was all right, 
my eye squinting to the very top 
DENOYER-GEPPERT SOCIAL SCIENCE MAPS 
yet our sniveling old lover laments 
he can read no more though we plea 
to hear her "I cannot live with you." 
"No, I can't," but he does indulge 
us with Mr. Eliot, gulping, choking 
for words out of a new world, 
prefacing "Marina," and I go back 
imagining gray clouds of gas 
spreading all over this child's map, 
the professor choosing not 
to read Quis hic locus, quae / 
regio, quae mundi plaga? then 
coughs, wipes his nose, heaves, 
refers, in tears, to Pericles, 
the loss of a daughter. 
I wade into the cool blue 
M E 
  D
   I 
    T E R R A N 
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           AN  SEA 
surprised Britain has not yet 
pitched its tent in Palestine. 
Disturbed I set sail north in deep 
open waters, find open-faced S W E D E N 
the soft yellow blur in N O R W A Y 
and in the distance "What seas … shores" 
then nothing more to color in, in 1914. 
I wonder why the two of us couldn't 
just now lie down in olive S I C I L Y; 
then we all clap, so swept away 
in love and death, so goddamn ready 
for the last speaker of the afternoon. 
I drift back to those dark yarn-
thick rivers in parakeet R U S S I A 
and on the very edge, east, as far 
as I will ever know, a red fiber 
moves a few inches west, suddenly 
drops, a Richter scale descending 
into a sea I can't identify. 
The third speaker takes the microphone, 
lightens the room with Edith Wharton, 
then something cool crosses over 
all of soft crayon Europe. 
I catch the glimpse of soft beige 
lace in the V of Horace's blouse, 
find her smiling, amused, open-toed 
sandals balanced so easefully 
in the long afternoon and she whispers 
Yes I will so I rise from my 
front row seat, lift the wild swans, 
Horace, the smell of wild moose 
and both of us, hands in each others' 
walk toward E U R O P E  I N  1 9 1 4, 
she leading with a step into the sunny 
brown calf of I T A L Y hearing 
in the distance witty somethings 
from The Custom of the Country and I look 
back, the two of us waving, 
happy myths descending into ROME.