Reading Tristia in Rome

I have studied the science of parting
In the bareheaded laments of night.
– Osip Mandelstam, Tristia

you know everywhere
reminds me of that other
  
elsewhere, emphasis
on know not you
  
it is true I discovered the pistachio
but only as an after thought
  
yes, I discovered the pistachio
as on little white sails
  
you sailed the ocean blue
sweating coriander on a salted breeze
  
memory has a coastline
nostalgia an island
  
grief its own compact with soil
I read that in Prince Henry the Navigator’s
  
Guide to Mortadella & Other Cures
and I am lost now in your America
  
I am lost in America looking for your granaries
counting apples as you say
  
waiting for the king to pass
his big book of feelings
  
windfall, empirical
not unlike his endless supply of Americas
  
you know everywhere
reminds me of that other
  
elsewhere, emphasis
on you not know

Born and raised in South Africa, Adrian Lürssen has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past thirty years. His full-length collection, Human Is to Wander, was published in 2022 by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University (and selected by Gillian Conoley for that year's Colorado Prize for Poetry). His chapbook NEOWISE was published by Trainwreck Press (Canada). Another chapbook, COMMON PRACTICE, is forthcoming from Antiphony Press in 2027.

Over the years his work has appeared in a range of magazines and journals, including Posit, Phoebe, Fence, VOLT, Boston Review, antiphony, mercury firs, digital vestiges, Indiana Review, and elsewhere.