James Thomas Hazard
The long Spanish
Steps in the city of Rome
On a languid, tepid
summer night
The young, terraced
hip to hip,
Lay cards on books,
bags by their feet,
Every cubic angle of
art on walls
For the crimson
Hammer and Sickle
Like a tooth in the
gears of machine-age memory
In a city of ruins
and ancient history,
Stories
spider-cracking their way through stone
On a languid, tepid
summer night
The shards of glass
that sparkle on cloth,
The stars in the
purple shelter of night,
Spread between two
men, the one who talks
As the other cocks
his head
“True faith alone,
you will see, is the lodestone
For the Word and its
power
To keep us from harm
as our Savior has promised.”
First one hand and
then the other
No salt copper red
but petrified pieces
Of light on palms,
like drops of rain or beads of sweat
And then the rubble,
applied to face
As I flinch but watch
While the bored
smoke, knees to their chin,
Spotting flags from
the windows of a bus
A miracle! They shout
Our team has made a
goal and won
The greatest game
that ever was
Someone dances, then
another
Round the Piazza di
Spagna
Men hoist to their
shoulders the children who smile
Down at the mothers
who spin on their heels
And shriek and shout
and sing in delight
Till la polizia form
a line of shields and clubs
So we disperse and
leave unscathed
To home or a cozy bed
and breakfast
Where my old friend
waits for me in his sleep
On this night of
miracles,
A languid, tepid
summer night
“This poem is about an actual event I experienced one night in Rome during the early 80s. For decades I considered writing about it but didn’t get around to it. I think I had to let my unconscious mind work on the memory until I developed a deeper understanding of what I had seen."