Overlooking the Cortile

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Late winter yet we stood at the open window
Its green wood shutters pushed back like wings
Against the walls of the ancient building
We stood at the aperture of the narrow room
Looking down onto the fountain in the cortile
Her old room now mine & she said nothing
Of the year she’d slept here
Knowing the Russian painter she loved
Was out somewhere on the streets of Rome
Walking with his Contessa every evening at dusk
As the grief of a rossignol ran down the stones of
The faded wall just outside her window & along the ivy
Seeping slowly as water from the lips of Orpheus
& those liquid sobs of a Roman nightingale

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“Friendships made in another country are sometimes unlike those we make at home. We imagine we don’t bring with us the weight of our personal histories, yet the urgency of travel allows secrets to be revealed that otherwise might remain untold. ‘Overlooking the Cortile’ is about one of those friendships, one that remains, across the distance, to this day.”
—David St. John