Read an Excerpt
Barbara Hamby:
Ode to the Lost Luggage Warehouse at the Rome Airport
Until you've visited the lost luggage warehouse
at the Rome airport in August, you have not lived,
the Mediterranean sun insinuating itself
into the inner sucking marrow of your bones,
roasting your epidermis like a holiday bird.
A goose, upon reflection, would be the fitting
analogy. You hear the faint sizzling of the fat
under your skin, organs grilling, brain singed
as you walk to the guardhouse and show the uniformed
sentinel your paper that certifies you have indeed
lost your bag. You gaze at his amazing hat with plumes
tinted maroon and gold while he scrutinizes your clutch
of ragged forms, signed by Signor Nardo Ferrari,
minor functionary with the state airline
at the ufficio in Florence, who has confided
in beautiful English he will retire at the end
of the month and devote himself to the cultivation
of vegetables and fruit, a noble endeavor,
but you suspect he'll not be leaving his lush paradiso
to iron out your petty problems, for you have come
in pursuit of your bag, supplicant on a holy quest to retrieve
that which is your own, or was once your own,
the dresses, coat, boots, and intimate et cetera,
nothing priceless, no treasures as such, but dear to you,
especially the black coat you bought in Paris
in a decrepit building below Sacré-Coeur,
going with Mimi after lunch, giving the secret password,
hearing the answering hiss, walking up four flights
of stairs to a room filled with ugly clothes,
one divine coat, now lost in the dark regions
of this Italian underworld, you hope, for if not here,
it's apparently nowhere, and this warehouse is a warren
of high-ceilinged rooms with thousands of bags stacked
on metal shelves, precariously piled backpacks
with scurf from Katmandu, Malmö, Khartoum, Köln, Kraków,
Istanbul, Reims in France or Francia in italiano,
chic makeup cases, black bags like the suitcases of doom,
hard-shelled portmanteaus like turtles (soft parts
incognito, mating in tandem), briefcases, carpet bags,
19th-century trunks with straps and buckles,
and you see a woman, molto dolorosa, in latex gloves,
a surgeon delving, methodically, in a suitcase
filled with Japanese snacks — arare, dried squid, rice candy
wrapped in thin edible paper, red and green jellied
sweets — recognized from your childhood in Hawai'i, and amid
the conglomerazione of heat, memory, and rage you imagine
a Japanese man, thinking, I'm going to Italy, but the food,
I'll hate it, then packing his favorites: the sublime
shredded mango of blessed memory, cracked plum, dried peas,
and you think of Sei Sho-nagon, supercilious court lady
in 10th-century Japan because you are reading her Pillow Book,
a record of things that disgust or please her
and you whip your kimono around and say,
"Things I adore about Rome: the lingerie stores
for nuns with their fifties bulletproof brassieres
and other medieval undies; the floor of St. Peter's
with its imperialistic measurements of the lesser cathedrals
of the world, St. Paul's in London, the Milan cathedral;
Caravaggio's Bacchus and Madonna of Loreto.
Things that disgust me in August: backpacks with cheese,
child carriers imbedded with the scum of mashed
bananas and cereal, petroleum-laced breezes
from jet exhaust, the color navy blue." Your Italian
is meager but the denizens of this particular realm
of hell are courteous if lethargic and show you
that the bags are stacked by month:
agosto, luglio, giugno, but that's as far
as they go. No Joe DiMaggio or before. To be
anywhere else is all you want. You hate your clothes,
no coat's worth the flames licking your feet, but
you take a careful waltz through the months,
and find nothing in the midst of so much.
The whole long way back to Florence, while the gorgeous
panorama of the countryside flies by,
you have a caffè, try to read, but a few seats down
a child screams, hysterical with fatigue,
and you see his face with its sticky impasto of snot,
candy and tears, and you think of all your losses,
those past and the ones to come, your own death,
il tuo morto, which makes the loss of a French coat,
shoes, and a few dresses seem ridiculous.
You think of your arrival in Florence, the walk home
from the station past the Duomo, your husband's hands,
his kisses and the dinner you'll eat, prosciutto
and melone, perhaps, some ravioli in a restaurant
near the Sant'Ambrogio market, you'll buy a new coat
for winter, an Italian coat, il soprabito,
one more beautiful than the one lost. That's the way
your life will go, one day after another,
until you begin your kamikaze run toward death.
It makes you sick to think of it until you begin
to get used to the idea. I'd better get busy,
you think, enjoy life, be good to others,
drink more wine, fill a suitcase with arare,
dried squid because when you leave home anything can happen.
You may be caught in a foreign country one day,
without money, clothes or anything good to eat,
and you'll have to try that stinky ravioli,
brine-soaked pig knuckles, poached brains quivering
on a wooden platter, tripe, baked ear wax,
fried grasshoppers, ant cakes, dirt soufflés,
and though it seems impossible, they could prove
delicious or at the very least nourishing,
so don't make a fool of yourself, and one day
you may join Signor Ferrari in his bosky Eden.
Everyone will be there God, Jesus and Mary,
your mother and father, even your pain-in-the-ass sister
who got everything. Heaven, you hate it:
the conversation's boring, and everyone's so sane,
so well-adjusted. And it's cold. Heaven should be warm,
a bit like Tahiti, so you're furious, and then you see
your sister, and she's not cold because she's wearing
your French coat, but you're not in heaven, you're on a train,
going faster, it seems, as you approach Florence.
You're in a muddle, glum, have nothing to show
for your day but a headache and a blister
on your heel. You want the train to crash,
blow you to kingdom come. You want your mother
to kiss you, call you Baby, Darling; you'd sell
your soul for some shredded mango or dried plum.
from Five Points
Copyright © 2000 by David Lehman
