Dubliners on the Adriatic
La mia anima รจ a Trieste…
1
Trieste. Trst. Tristesse.
Rustle of sea birds rising
from this doubling bay,
suggestive echoes along the Canal Grande:
here, of all places, to stumble on
Joyce among the Hapsburgs,
blind bronze staggered mid-stride.
Unhinged from its hinterland,
this polyglot port’s piazza’s fading
hulks outline a century’s diminishment:
‘the last foothold before…’ etc, etc,
(barbarism, in short),
Austria-Hungary’s gravestone wedged
in the crotch of the Adriatic.
Distant Istria fumes blue in the heat.
White Miramar – from where
reluctant Maximilian despatched
for Mexico (and Manet) – plunges
foolishly above the sea,
imperial mockery mocked,
the silver, unmoving sea.
2
City of sighs,
where the wise
keep their eyes on
the empty horizon,
though no ships come
and the quays are dumb
as Franz Ferdinand
lumping up the Corso,
dead. Or the Risiera
where the Jews were killed.
3
But staggering mostly, by ill-repute,
he was, from quay to quay,
until Consul’s counsel held sway,
and he teetered off to the bahnhof.
Under palms, under plane trees,
Joyce whistled off-key by the Chiave D’Oro,
(girls there knowing him, by ill-repute),
for his Triestine tryst with Nora.
Honest, Jim, she’ll smell them on your breath! –
and her fresh-flustered from the Zurich train,
he fanfared her exile into his free world,
waltzed her through statued gardens,
his animated, Babelous greeting:
‘Per donna, jam hors de clay.’
