SEVEN OF CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI’S OPERE MUSICALI ARE LOST
Edward Mayes | Poetry
Quite different from the Filippo Lippi fresco
We saw yesterday in Scarperia, which really
Wasn’t but had been thought was, but was
Never lost because to become lost you have
To be ready to become found and if not ready,
Then you’re lost forever, until you’re ready,
The time we were on the archeological dig
In Jerusalem and everyone kept bumming
My Winston-Salem’s, my forlornness had
Sunk in at that point, and I’ve been a slalomist
Ever since, and how often the two of us
Thought it best to use an ur-language here
Or an S language when we’re feeling strange,
As sometimes happens, especially in the early
Morning, but lost works, not just words lost,
But notes, for the sackbut, which we can’t play,
For the curved cornett, which we can’t play,
The knives of Andrea Berti we saw in Scarperia,
One from Jacopo Carucci’s (il Pontormo), La Cena in
Emmaus, now lost, the knife, and we were trying to remember
If we saw a knife on the table in Michelangelo
Merisi’s (il Caravaggio) La Cena in Emmaus, now lost,
The knife, if there had even been one, that is, the stranger
Met on the road to Jerusalem, ten kilometers to Jerusalem,
His backpack stuffed with lost opere, hungry, not having
Eaten since what he thought was his last supper, a boy in
The field with sheep, drawing what could be a sheep on
A smooth stone, in Vicchio, we saw that, near Il Cedro, now lost.
Edward Mayes’s most recent book, Obbligato, was published in 2025 by Solleone Edizioni: 26 poems, with 26 corresponding paintings by Alberto Alfonso. Other books include First Language, Juniper Prize and Works and Days, AWP Prize in Poetry. He’s published poems in The New Yorker, APR, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, and Poetry. He lives in Durham, North Carolina and Cortona, Italy, with his wife, the writer Frances Mayes.