Roman Fountain
Andrew Frisardi

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​​The groping bodies meld atop a comber

Raised by hands and molds of sculptural Rome.

Rome the Colossus. The Very Much that births

The More. Flesh-colored cloudlets like trompe l’oeil

Dangle above the piazza’s winking eye.

 

Brickwork at the nearby bathhouse ruins

Swells then shimmers inward, set in motion

By the hot glare of frolicking bronze nudes

Splashing in endless—one might say eternal—

Foreplay. Their hands are clasping metal manes

 

Of mares and stallions launched from pools of bracing

Spring water, which traveled downhill all this way

To gush the moments into marble bowls,

Over whose rims the water all the while . . .

. . . How to say it? breaks its crystal smile?

 

Which, by the way, is what the nymphs are doing.

They don’t have to sublimate, being

The sublimation. It is a proper orgy,

Fin-de-siècle style, in the name of Art.

Each bimbo naiad has a Rambo triton,

 

Exerting quads and biceps to arise

From the terrific nether-pull of bronze,

The humdrum roundabouts of cars and scooters,

The crazed inertia of the modern city.

Rome that defies you: Go ahead and eat me!

 

The stomachs of the epochs and the mouths

Of popes and emperors ratified this truth.

Who gave bronze and stone such appetites?

Rome eats itself in saucy bocconcini,

And when it’s done it licks its fingers clean.​​

 

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Andrew’s notes: “My father and grandparents and generations before them were from Trastevere; my American mother married my father in Rome, and we lived there when I was a wee babe and often visited my grandmother and relatives. At a certain age, when I was old enough to travel to Rome on my own, I felt like I’d been plugged into an electric socket and permacharged. Rome is lifeblood. It is a palimpsest of itself. It is Bernini-Fellini-esque: Christian and pagan, holy and profane, wild and civilized, eternal and fleeting. In other words, I adore it and am gobsmacked by it, as I’ve tried to express in this poem, which comes from my collection The Harvest and the Lamp. Bocconcini, by the way, means tasty little bite-size morsels.“

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Andrew Frisardi is a writer, translator, and editor. Lately he has been translating poems by Maria Luisa Spaziani, two of which are in the Fall 2025 Hudson Review, and including her long narrative poem about Joan of Arc. His introduction to Petrarch and his poetry will be published in A. M. Juster’s translation of the complete Canzoniere, due out from W. W. Norton in April 2026.

 

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Pic credit:

‘Fontaine des Naïades [Fontana delle Naiadi / Fountain of the Naiads]’,

    Chabe01 (via Wikipedia)​

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