Fortuno Carraccioli

A Satire

The fat woman in the flat across the court

has slammed her window shut, |

thinking I snoop on her. Doesn't she know

I'm not curious about a fat woman undressing?

I want to get things straight on people.

Last night, sweating in my pyjamas,

with kitchen slop and sweat smells oppressing me,

I hated people, but I want now to call across

and tell that woman, "I don't hate you.

Let's understand. It's what we both put up with."

The wife doesn't see the joke of red underwear

dancing on clothes-lines against smoke-stacks.

She thinks I jeer at the people,

feeling myself a precious superior man.

I tell her I love those people.

They have what I haven't:

strong bodies to do hard work,

and they don't bother thinking things

that get none of us anywhere.

Coming home on the evening of a too hot day

I passed an old man begging and heard him curse:

"T have more brains than any of you

but you won't give me a nickel to eat with."

Maybe he was right. Where did he come from?

I can't make songs about the good spirits

brewed in men because Chicago is a good wine.

Stopping at the corner saloon to have a beer,

I see the young men old, the old men bitter,

and they don't look at me as only a poor wop.

They are Hunkies, Polacks, Russians,

Fins, Kikes, Dagos, Greasers, and Swedes-

all lousy foreigners themselves. .

They were young men who started with well-knit bodies;

they were old men with good muscle beneath their dirty

clothes.

They didn't get together with me or the others, though.

They drank their beer and went away, heavily.

I thought, "another day, a hot day."

I go down State Street past shows for men only.

I halt before a burlesque house but do not enter,

knowing too well how with seductive modesty

girls undress. Except for the few leering men,

even the men in America know more of display

and less of love than in Italy.

I shiver in my skin with the heat,

thinking of my neighbor

who works in the stockyards, wondering,

does he wear that red flannel underwear this weather?

I smell stench, hear |

one of those intellectuals talking.

He tells me it is always the hurt romantics,

Robert McAlmon

the neurotics, those who can't cope with life,

who, safe from the masses, write sour-sweet songs.

Does he adjust and cope with life, to like it?

I want to talk to one of those toiling

brawny careless goodnatured guys,

who works ten hours daily and doesn't mind.

I don't find one.

Who are the men on State Street?

Some stop to take that constipation tea,

or buy a potion which will make them virile, for why?

I confess I got confused listening to a radical.

He told of loving one's fellowmen

and dynamiting capitalists and their institutions.

Then we would be governed by a benevolent anarchy.

He got mad when I told him he didn't understand "an-

archy."

That man I could not talk to long.

He was hungry, not as I often am,

but empty, not knowing what he wanted.

I wouldn't trust that fellow to be kind

and I am not one who nurses distrust.

Always he hid himself behind scolding ideas.

He wanted, instead of my love,

to make me help him believe his own ideas.

He thought I wasn't going to pay for my beer.

I paid for his, and he wanted another.

I want to get things straight about people,

but he didn't have things straight.

He wanted things different, but not free.

Only for his confusion I had a pity,

and pity has love in it but it is not love.

I wandered on State Street where men and women hunt.

Maybe they hunt sex, but I think they are only lonely.

I go, no longer crying aloud,

through sweltering alleys to escape the furnace.

On the lake front machines keep hurtling past.

The seagulls circle, and I sense disaster.

Once I was a little boy,

a kid who dreamed.

Coming home late at night

Luigi held my hand

or put his arm about my shoulder.

I was not afraid

but liked Luigi to take care of me.

The hills about Firenze

are lambent with lavender

in a frosted mist. Fragrantly

sweet night comes on.

I think I hear a night bird call

and nostalgic joy laments within me.

Remembering sweet-sounding names:

Benozzo Gozzoli,

Robert McAlmon

I see silver hounds pursue a stag

up the bejewelled terrace to the palace,

realm of the visionary.

Gently the soothing moon arises.

Far away I hear a singing call.

A young goat bleats,

and town sounds fall.

Graciella, joyous mother sent to sorrow,

mother most graciously beautiful,

Graciella, what did you to love,

and love to you?

Muted, the breeze,

twangs my nerve heart cords.

Soft on evening gentle darkness creeps.

Luigi holds my hand. I'm fearsome lonely.

There at home I know Emilia weeps.

Emilia, why came not love to you?

Robert McAlmon