Not quite so far as lingua franca

~
This dictionary page, 1067,
I'm certain I've never been here
no, no reason to come--
for I know most of the words
and don't care about the others. There's

liner notes--comments or explan-
atory notices about a re-
cording printed on the jacket or
an insert

(the contents of those were more marvelled at
than Sartre or Barthes or Deleuze,
or even Eccclesiastes
at certain ages..)

Ah, better.
Lingere--French (quel surprise!),
from Middle French,
from linge, linen--two hundred
generations of lilting and brushing and
lifting and creating sex

Yet not quite so far
or promising as
lingua franca--a common language
consisting of Italian mixed
with everything Madamina
mixes it with,
doppo elle departir su casa
grazie, niente

~~~

This page, I've been at
all my life, every day.
These things that are here, today,
the lie of the calendar is that
I have never been to them--but I have been,
I'm certain I have:
age 47 today, but always, page
one zero six seven
at least a thousand
times before--for I know all the words, all
of them; like here, it says

lingual, linguine, linguistic
and off my tongue
have slid speculations about
what today might taste and feel and even
sound like, here it is
without shame or service or apology
late forties, shiny winter, a blue sky
puffed like Paris in the fall
so thoughtfully, (indeed I had
a Heineken, as the vendors at
jardin luxembourg
so eagerly make you make
your day with,
and then also, so opportunely,
Tristan, just the overture, and red wine...)

And when even mystically halfway here,
(twenty three years and change ago),
it was all old hat already,
maybe at Rhino records, looking
at liner notes, or slipping
lingere off some shaking limb, or twirling
oily linguine against crusty bread,
or running on grass, or skipping
in fancy tennis shoes
past funerals, I could read, knowingly,
on a secret marble plinth of mine
looking in awe at the warmth
of the proximate orange grove,
merely having got half so far but far enough
to know then as now--

Yet the vinyard's ruby treasures
brighten autumn's sob'rer time.
~