On the Collecting of Beauty (Creative Writing Assignment #21)

I.

Rome is the most beautiful of cities.
There live the most beautiful people.
There is found the most beautiful artwork.

I am leaving for Rome now.


II.

The plane doors open,

Italy exhales deeply.
Moist, muggy
air
hits my face.

It oppresses me.


III.

The buildings have been
lacerated by graffiti,

Excruciatingly bright neon scrawl,
only as high as the tallest Roman.

I am looking for beauty.


IV.

A gypsy woman,
her skull burdened by

a thousand

sores.

I have not yet found beauty.


V.

In a city, beauty dwells on the streets.
The museum is not the city.
The church is not the city.

I have searched the Corso,
the backstreets,
the bridges,
the parks.

Is Rome the most beautiful of cities?

Perhaps I am not a city person.


VI.

I have caught glimpses of it.
Three obelisks seen from one point,
space is drawn together toward me.

Green light.

The image is gone.


VII.

Say he came from a hill town,
from a thatched hut.

Long ago he saw an icon decorated with gold,
it flashed in the dim church.
He marveled to see the image of a man in lifeless metal.
All other pictures for him
have been drawn in the cold soil.

He comes to Rome.
A pilgrimage.
He sees a palazzo,
he sees a piazza,
he sees the statues,
so much greater than that
small icon.

He is finally warm,
this must be the city of God.

The most beautiful city in the world.


VIII.

I glimpse it again.
A wizen man waters the flowers upon his deck.
Vibrant, exuberant flowers that cannot help
but sweetly dangle themselves before the street below.

“Hurry, hurry, we must not be late!”

The vision is gone.


IX.

A memory:
We are in the airport,
above our heads hang dirty, loose wires,
bloated worms laying eggs in an infection.

To our side are gold display cases,
designer purses that seem as if
nothing should ever contaminate their perfection.

Beauty here,
Ugliness here.

Am I beginning to understand the secret?


X.

He watches the carriage of the Pope
riding past him through the sodden streets.
Purple, gold embroidered curtains sway in crystal windows.

Mud splashes onto his cloak.

Which does he see
the Pope or the mud?


XI.

Two weeks in Rome.
Have I discovered the cause of my blindness?


XII.

There is beauty in all cities.
But the people of cities position it
in different ways.

Like two keepers of
a Zen garden,
we rake our beauty
in contrary patterns.

Where I am from,
we spread it evenly,
so that we completely cover the dirt below.

The Romans collect it in great piles.
They do not look to the dirt.
They look to the magnificence
of the piles.