Michael Waters
Melrose
ATHENS
We named the bar Diva because we couldn’t decipher
The gold Greek script stenciled on its window,
Though it may have read Maestro or even Overture
As the bar was located off Poseidonos
Across from the National Opera House.
Late afternoons, the unlit taproom empty & cool,
I’d idle on a barstool, having taught a novel
By Wharton or James, to wait for my wife
Who engaged in conversational English
With dropouts who hoped to find work in the States.
I imagined myself in love with Parthenopi,
Quick & pretty &, mainly, Greek,
Her name common, “little virgin,”
& as I sipped a second retsina
I pictured our Lawrencian life together
On her island with its homemade
Wines & edible daylilies & ringing bells
As flocks descended hillocks to sheds
Before the sun extinguished itself
In the amphora of the Aegean. Pastoral,
My dreamlife remained adolescent & pastoral,
& as I bided time one early dusk
The bartender, whose name I forget,
Placed a bottle of Greek gin on the bartop
Next to an empty bottle of top-shelf British,
Then slipped a white plastic funnel
Into one small mouth & began to splash
The cheap brand into the Boodles.
Seeing my surprise, he motioned
Not for you & nodded toward the opera house.
Of course. Then my wife arrived.
You must change your life, wrote Rilke, but how?
We returned home to the familiar
Arc of an American tale—but
Even now I can recall that label.
I’d purchased a bottle on our stroll home
To see how awful any gin could taste, & discovered,
Dear ex, dear reader, that it didn’t burn my throat
Nearly as much as I’d thought, though
I knew I’d never drink that gin again.
Michael Waters’ recent books include Sinnerman (Etruscan Press, 2023), Caw (BOA Editions, 2020), The Dean of Discipline (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) & the coedited anthology Border Lines: Poems of Migration (Knopf, 2020). Recipient of five Pushcart Prizes & fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation & National Endowment for the Arts, Waters lives without a cell phone in Ocean, NJ.