Consolation

Consolation

How agreeable it is not to be
touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities
and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local,
familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning
of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures
of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here,
no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize
a succession of kings
or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus,
see Napoleon's little bed on Elba,
or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command
the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed
by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books
and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry,
one-eyed camera
eager to eat the world
one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café
ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop
and the waitress known as Dot.
I will slide into the flow
of the morning paper,
all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely,
eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast,
I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me
with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill
or record in a journal
what I had to eat
and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English
itself and sounding my loud vernacular horn,
speed off down a road that will never lead
to Rome, not even Bologna.

Billy Collins

Posted over on Poemhunter