Today I am missing Italy. I've never been there, but I miss it. I miss hearing the music floating out of the cafes and shops. I miss the Sistine Chapel and the gelato. I miss looking at the beautiful Italian women and men. I miss the pictures I would take. They'd be real artsy, because I'm kind of an artist in embryo. Italy is where I discover how artsy I am. I knew I was, but then I see the amazing photos I'm taking, I see my fine taste in art, and I realize, wow Erin, you are so artsy. I miss finding a secret map of Rome and saving all of the men in line to be pope right before they .... (Sorry-Angels and Demons. Good movie. Ewan McGregor had me fooled all the way until the end. He has such an honest face. I really liked him.)I read the following poem once a year or so to remind me how glad I am that I'm not actually in Italy, riding the gondolas and sampling the pasta. I realize the silliness of even wanting to be there. I breathe a huge sigh of relief and then go do the laundry.
CONSOLATION
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.
How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?
Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.
And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.
Billy Collins
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.
How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?
Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.
And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.
Billy Collins
6 comments:
Pardon my confusion - do you or do you not want to be in Italy??? I was also fooled by that naughty Ewan, too. I kept secretly hoping he would break out into song on top of a basilica or something.
I thought you had read my European trip journal as you mentioned these things tourists see and do in Italy. Many of your "memories" are mine. Great writing. MOM
Kelly, Billy Collins' poem is about just that, talking yourself out of this deep desire to be walking the streets of Italy. He's cleverly saying how much he does want to be there. I was a little more overt by saying I MISS ITALY.
Oh and you're right. If Ewan didn't charm us so much in Moulin Rouge, I would have seen it coming so much sooner.
Too bad you can't have medication...
anti-Italy medication? Sweet.
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