This is a love poem about my life.
And it takes place--
I'm on a Greek mountain, little Greek village.
It's called Going Wrong.
The fish are strange.
They're brought up the mountain in the dawn,
most days beautiful and alien and cold from night
under the sea, the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes.
Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks, washing them.
"What can you know of my machinery?"
demands the Lord.
"Sure," the man says quietly and cuts into them,
laying back the dozen struts, Getting to the muck of something
terrible.
The Lord insists, "You are the one
who chooses to live this way.
I build cities where things are human.
I make Tuscany, and you go to live with rock and silence."
The man washes away the blood and arranges the fish
on a big plate, starts the onions and the hot olive oil
and puts in peppers.
You have lived all year without women.
He takes out everything and puts in the fish.
No one knows where you are.
People forget you.
You're vain and stubborn.
The man slices tomatoes and lemons, takes out the fish,
and scrambles eggs.
"I am not stubborn," he thinks, laying all of it
on the table in the courtyard full of early sun, shadows
of swallows flying on the food, "not stubborn, just greedy."