August Vacation
August Vacation
These young Italian families, a couple
Of daughters, indistinguishable from
One another, and a bored, younger son,
Each with several devices, meters
Of white cordage, headphones and neck pillows.
The parents aren’t much older than I am.
She’s beginning to go gray and will be
More beautiful for it, while he’s starting
To put on weight he’ll never be able
To lose. It’s too early, a fact for which
He’s being blamed. The tenderness of him
Buying the tickets months ago, the light
Of the site in his lenses, knowing that
Come August they’d want to leave the city
To its heat and crowds for somewhere south.
A maid has made up the beds in the house
She rented while he was buying the flights
With crisp white sheets, and the sun, the same sun
They are fleeing the brutality of,
Is warming the wide flagstone floors
The daughters will cross so unthinkingly
On their high-arched feet. And it’s all for them,
These girls and the boy they blithely ignore
But adore. The parents have given up
On passion — they’ll take any bits of pleasure
That fall to them, like the cats that live
Under the tables at the seafood place
Where they already have a reservation.
In the two weeks they’re there the place
Will be as much theirs as it is anyone’s.
Damp towels drying on the backs of chairs.
Novels begun bravely and abandoned.
The sheets and floors gritty with sand.
The eldest girl pressed in a harmless crush
With a boy a few houses down.
And after the kids are safely in bed,
These two will sit out on the balcony,
Drinking more wine than they normally do,
Not saying much, just listening to the sea
Crashing on the breakers somewhere below,
Baring its white teeth like an old dog
That means no harm, that is only in pain.