WET PAINT

6 3 R W E T P A I N T S T A N L E Y M O S S 1. Today, my Italian-American electrician who’s never been to Italy and doesn’t want to go because it’s out of his way, smells the cinnamon in my oatmeal from across the room, that I can’t smell holding the hot bowl in my lap. It’s true, I can’t see what’s playing on a marquee half-a-mile away anymore, that I say, ‘‘What’s that you said?’’ quite often, English mustard and horseradish are less hot, but I can touch more than I could touch a little while ago, and more touches me. I am not lying when I tell you I touched Courbet’s Origin of the World when the paint was wet, the summer of 1866. I smell a rat, I am too old. My nose is Roman partisan. I remember the smell of di√erent ladies, Lady Cinnamon, Lady Turmeric, Countess of Cloves, a Sa√ron ungrammatical companion who sang, ‘‘Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?’’ Smelling, whispering and wolf-growling, young me had a den, paper hills, drafts of poems and books rugged the dirty floor. They tripped me, I almost broke a leg. 6 4 Y 2. Deaf rivers try to lip-read poetry, blind rivers read Milton in windy braille. They do not have diction because they are voiceless. The riverbanks, I know, are thighs, male and female. The river tongues, tastes the shallows. Greetings, my senses, my salutations are old, not fashionable. I don’t kiss hands as some Italian signorini do wearing a bathing suit at the Lido. The senses change from season to season. I love fashionable forests that change from day to day, season to season. This is a preamble to my anti-Platonic dialogue between fashion and Mrs. Death. ...