~RITA SIGNORELLI-PAPPAS~
EVENING
IN VEZELAY
Who was he÷that
waiter so majestic
and droll÷
as he presided over our
dinner at
the hotel in Vezelay,
the way he spun his
balletic bulk
to and from our table,
his pride in each
exquisite gesture
of service,
and who were we sitting
there in
northern France
sipping our wine and
trying not
to think of dying,
was it a reproach when you
said
I was devoted to pleasure,
were you beginning at that
very
moment to fall in love
with the woman at the
table across
the way
who gazed all night at her
deformed
husband
with adoration, remember
our waiter's
jaunty glissades
to the dessert cart, the
play of
his hands like the sweep
of Christ's arms lifting
out of
the tympanum over our heads,
remember how we felt that
in another
life that wife and husband
might have been our
friends, we
might have
all walked up the hill
together
to the cathedral at dusk
or joked that the zigzag
of Christ's
legs
made him look as if he
were dancing,
remember
my insatiable hunger for
touch,
the desire
of a cicada rising through
the evening
air,
our waiter's moon-white
innocence
as he bowed
and presented the check,
then the
silence that fell between us
when we climbed the steps
to our
room,
each exiled in the midst
of pleasure,
you
slipping back down the
stairs of
your first life,
I stranded like a cicada
in passion's
momentary song.
© by Rita
Signorelli-Pappas