Numana

Reading:

I

Two days on a crowded train and we were in Numana: 
A crumbling church, cottages, and fishing boats upon a shingle beach. 
Sixty years ago, worn by six months grief, I woke from an exhausted sleep 
To hear the sea. But where was she? Snatched by some predatory local thief!
But you were there, close by our clothes, deep into an Italian grammar. 
In one great leap I crossed a chasm of despair to infinite relief.

Two nuns escort their class of infants to the shore
For morning prayers and then some lessons.
We sat twenty yards away. Not far enough it seemed.
Concerned that when their charges saw the body of my love 
In her bikini, their childish minds might not deplore 
Such spectacles as sins they asked if we would move. 

Amusement tussled with annoyance
Till both were swept away by pride.
(Ignoble passion of the would-be alpha male!)
That the beauty of my youthful bride be thought
To stain those children’s innocence was to me the real regret. 
Out of courtesy we moved, me calming fears, ‘You look fine.  Don’t fret!’ 


II

On TV in our three-star hotel lounge we watched Madonna.
In simulated provocation and wearing nothing much at all 
She shimmied on a distant stage in some arena built for football. 
A wriggling midget bawling in a phallic mike she had the crowd a-roar.
And yet however sexy her persona, she could not compare with my true love who, shy and unaware, had so perturbed the nuns those twenty years before. 

Synthetic sex was not confined to television. The tourist board was flogging Sleazy kitsch as well. Wet tee-shirt competitions now topped off the season. 
Time rolls on and life get worse? Or is it merely us who now feel old 
And things are swell? A princess from Sirolo once kept Grecian vases 
For her tomb. Now naked youths cavort upon a krater in the town museum. 
Do nuns today deplore such sights, like those who long ago, saw fit to scold?

Or are they up to date with modern manners now? More important, what do Those now grown-up children think? A garish pile in concrete threatens
The piazza where a much-loved church once stood, symbol that religion too Must keep up with the times. But to change a style of building is an easy Thing; to honour flesh more difficult. How long ago that beauty of the body 
Spoke of the divine! How sad, that nuns did not know love from lust!

III

She swam in that same sea again, no longer young but beauty undiminished. 
I watched her as she walked up from that pebbled shelf a yard or so offshore,
Botticelli’s Venus come to life. I handed her the towel and looked up at the Town perched on its cliff. Once we’d stood there on a sultry night to watch
Lightning flash in thunder clouds far out to sea. When it had finished 
We danced on dusty tiles to schmaltzy pop tunes. Stars shone in affinity.

I think too of that first day when we’d joined the evening passeggiata. 
Her arm brushed mine, still salty from the hours spent in the tranquil ocean. 
Cooler now the sun was down it seemed that the entire town strolled in those Narrow streets, a slow procession of informal amity. (Another first for me!) 
Crones clad all in black gazed sternly down from open first floor windows 
Alert for any sign of dalliance between the idling couples. Che peccato!

On our final night we’d walked between the flowering oleanders to Sirolo, 
Cicadas in the pines so loud they drowned the sound of sandaled feet upon The gravel. By candlelight we ate our supper in a tiny courtyard Osteria. 
Next day we left our short-lived paradise for Rome and then on home. Numana, Numana! In my lexicon of memory ‘Numana’ is the Italian name
For happiness beyond my understanding. A thing of wonder:  
Ah, che bella bionda!