Notes from a Time Traveler

1.

My dear,
I’ve landed back in Paris.
The year is 1865, our own.
I thought you were to meet me here.
It rained all day. I watched the hats
of merchants float like barges up
and down a rain-drenched street. I’m waiting
in rooms I’ve taken in the house
kept by the owl-faced matron. Come. Come soon.
Until you do, I will remain
                        your sorrowing,
                                                  Pascal

2.

My dear,
it seems you will not come
to Paris, so arrangements have been made.
I will depart for Rome next week.
I shall be glad to leave the noise of much
construction, as they build and build
this city every day. I’ll land
in Rome for its decline, which now
begins to suit my mood. I am
                         still yours,
                                          Pascal

3.

Dearest,
it is better here in Rome, though I’ve somehow missed
my mark, arriving in the reign of Caracalla.

They say the Emperor has gone into the East. There are smiths
nearby; I hear the hammers murmur through the afternoon.

My accommodations are cheap and dirty, jutting
over the street like the chin of a beggar.

I fear the structure may collapse and spend little time at home.
Most days I pour myself into the throbbing crowds,

but this afternoon I walked alone through that olive orchard, where we
used to walk. But that was a century later, perhaps more,

although I thought I saw you in the shade, washing your ankles
in the little stream between the trees.

It was only the yellow-haired girl kept by the orchard master.
Tomorrow I shall see about a guide for the Etruscan tombs.

I’ll wait before I see the gardens of Sallust again. I am tormented
by your delay, but I remain
                        your devoted,
                                                Pascal

4.

Dearest,
Entswhistle tells me you are
in Cordova, though he doesn’t know
the year. I wonder if these notes
even reach you. Without word
I shall make a guess and come.
                                                Pascal

5.

My dear,
I waited long in Spain, but you
did not appear. To what can I compare
you? Once, when I was small, my father took
me walking through the countryside. At noon
we came to poplars on a grassy bank,
their shade a bridge across the little stream,
and he laid down to sleep awhile. But I
was wide awake and wandered to the edge.
Beneath the water’s dream I saw a stone
bright red among the other stones. I reached
and fell. The sunlight shattered all around
and then a voice above the stream. He pulled
me out.

Should you decide to come to me,
I am in England with the Virgin Queen.

6.

My dearest one,
forgive my mood last note.
The plague has come like blizzard on the town.
They do not know it is the rats and shut
themselves in sickened rooms to die. I feel
a fever coming on and shall remove
myself for better care elsewhere. For now,
know still I am a leaf adrift upon
your flood, a rumor of a distant city
burning, a basement room below the house
of all your thoughts, and yet still yours,
                                                            Pascal

7.

Fever. Burning. L.A., 1981. The men in white masks were out and in all day, asking about my mother. They will not catch her: she’s a balloon and may pop. You have a lover. There are spider-webs as thick as quilts upon the ceiling here, but only mechanical spiders like at the world’s fair Paris where you held my hand and where we heard the man on the phonograph. I heard your voice behind the television. Do you have a lover? Remember the olive grove. But was it your arms or was it the Tiber? Tiger. They say the ones closest to the bombs will become the air they stand in. They’ve put a tube in my arm or else they’ve pulled my veins external. You are the air I stand in. Do these notes reach you? They add more blankets each day. P.

8.

My dear,
my fever never broke but drained
itself while I was sleeping. Now I see
the truth about the two of us. This room
is all linoleum and white. The light
pokes its thin fingers into everything.
This is a place where it is hard to not
see. You do not love me, and I will go
beyond the edges of our time. Do not
expect much more from me. I will leave you
a note or two, like bats to call my darkness.
Farewell, my love and greatest cut.
                                                            Pascal

9.

Again I come to the sun’s expanding phase, as the seas begin to rise

                              into the air, lifting themselves en masse with a hiss.

This day of ash, this last day, I am again looking

                              and looking for the pomegranate seed that will keep

me below the ground. Again the terrible Spring. Many times

                              I repeat this day, more like an incessant nod than a refrain.

The trees are removing their wide green hats

                              to relieve their burning scalps. The window glass is melting.

I have sat down with the blossoming dead

                              and will sit with them this day again tomorrow.

10.

My dear,
I’ve seen both ends of time and say
nothing. As it was in the beginning,
it is now and ever shall be. Nothing
has changed between the two of us, but still
I hope. A horse’s feet are knocking past
on stone below my window, going on.
Each morning there is coffee with the news
from home. In afternoon I watch the smoke
pool up around the church’s tile roof.
I know you will not come and yet I wait
in France, where I remain the fool,
                                                             Pascal.







 

Benjamin Myers won the 2011 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry for his first book, Elegy for Trains (Village Books Press 2010). His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Measure, Christianity and Literature, The Chiron Review, Ruminate, The New Plains Review, The Mayo Review, poetrybay, and many other journals. His essays have appeared in several academic journals, including Studies in Philology and English Literary History. With a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, Myers teaches literature and writing at Oklahoma Baptist University. He blogs at www.myerspoetry.blogspot.com.