the scholar

inspired by the poet Chloe Martinez

I began to read the poems of Mirabai,

not Chloe’s prize-winning translations because,

well, I’m not elevated to her scholarship.

but I'm not unfamiliar with translations from the parent,

foreign tongue; Alistair Reid, Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin..

and have come to rely on them particularly from the Spanish.

for me, the translations have to sing in english, a hard-edged

germanic root of a tongue.

but in reading a few translated shorter poems of Mirabai,

I came to the root elements of my own brand of scholarship.

to the first floor tenement where a two-handled pot

heated water for spaghetti or for the tub–– and across the street

the ballpark glistened and alongside it the Esso station's fierce

scent in leaded gasoline and alongside that the meadow, sun-spiked;

as yellow as a long aged varnish and alongside the meadow

the 3 whacky giant billboards on Bedford, spraying, smoking, kissing,

hawking for my attention.. and alongside them––

the inebriated Marconi Club wherein my maternal grandfather

drank Port by the highball glassful until his left foot was amputated

and behind it the crazy bocce lanes where Bert Bertoncini lay dead

by the intentional thrust of a mad pallino to his temple by the hand

of Nick Fazzaro who'd had enough of Bert Bertoncini, and west therefrom

to the granite ledge which stiffened the flesh of “Pinky” Imbriglio, drowned..

the still water laying there as guilty as a neighborhood confessional and eastward

to the city dump where the best stuff waited under the stench

of everything else unwanted,–– then slightly north by west

to “Lizzy” Borden’s grave and of course she did it, then

southward not too deep toward the grammar school,

the unequaled Hugo A. Dubuque School where Bernadette Baker floated

as if upon a cloud of brushed-blue cotton candy passed my ridged desk

awakened by the scent of her mother’s “Tabu" and into this poet’s…

scholarship.