Sonnet 1: Roccamare
& Thuscus tu quoque Damon,
Antiqua genus unde petis Lucumonis ab urbe. [1]
– JOHN MILTON, ‘Epitaphium Damonis’
We went to Italy in the summer, me, you,
and your best friend. It was there
she took that photo, the one where
I’m looking down in my yellow shirt and you
up at the camera. There are a few
memories of that time left: the mountain air,
the grass dried to crisp yellow, your hair
still wet from the pool. (These things I know to be true,
and truer still by remembering them now.)
One evening we walked up the mountain
and listened in the fading light to a man playing
the violin, and when we came back down
it was dark, so in the darkness I shouted
until your voice answered with my name.
[1] ‘And you were Tuscan too, Damon, tracing your lineage from the ancient city of Lucca.’
