Unguided Tour of the French Riviera
BY BENJAMIN GOLDBERG
There’s a parable about memory
in which memory is a boat
used for trafficking human cargo.
But it’s easy to forget here.
We could talk instead about how
the Mediterranean scatters
through the city, alleys as veins
returning each cobalt glint
to the shore, the eyelid at light’s
sluice. Darkness and its denizens,
then, are determined by vision.
It’s this splinter of daylight
we can neither see nor pluck
from our pupils: needle-
points tattoo the veins of a girl
whose throat was just used
for everything but her voice.
Couldn’t we, in such brightness,
just call the promenade our god-
canvas and thatch from palm trees,
white pergolas, and the terra
cotta shingles of smoke-singed
kebab shacks a new roof
for this world? Under it, sunrise
would be love’s kitchen.
The bronzed hands of beach-
drunk youths making meals
of each other’s mouths: all history
has time for. We could float on
our backs awhile, our breath
tethering us to the stone jetties,
our mouths filling with the salt
we become as we stop watching.
