WEBVTT

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OK.

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This next poem
came from a summer

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when I was traveling in Sicily.

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I had always wanted to
visit the city of Pompeii

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since I'd seen it on a
NOVA especially when I

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was a little girl.

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And it was horribly
hot in Italy.

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I disembarked from the
train, and this weird thing

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happened, where I got my
ticket, I walked into Pompeii--

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and you have to
remember that this

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is a city that would take days
and days to actually explore,

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for those of you who
haven't been there.

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I walked into the city,
and there was no one there.

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It was just me in the city.

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Which is bizarre,
because I think

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something like 2.5 million
people visit it every year.

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So it's me in this
city, wandering around,

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and the sense of
history was so tangible.

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It was a really resonant moment.

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So this poem comes from that.

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It's called "Water Clocks."

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"The singing of the
blind school children

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and the Mediterranean's
flat expanse

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are metaphors for every kind
of solitude made forgivable

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by time.

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The hillside museum, with
rows of empty earthen vessels,

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is full of it.

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A stillness so
replete it resembles

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something like intimacy.

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A fullness only
partially fathomed.

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Like water clocks
and sundials that

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allowed time to be translated
into elements, droplets,

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shadows, and the laughter of
bathers from the spiaggetta.

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The train stops just
outside of Naples,

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where I buy a glass of cold
juice squeezed from tangerines

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and walk into Pompeii.

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I couldn't have imagined
the magnitude of it.

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Brilliant pillars
flush with sky,

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temples where sunlight streams
white and seems to radiate

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from inside the stones.

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Certain histories
require forgetfulness,

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others strict belief.

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But I think some
histories live us.

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In the higher
cities of the brain,

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even the speechless
ones are burning."

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