Florence

We spend the morning in the church of San Lorenzo, 
then it’s off to lunch: ravioli with truffles for me, 
and for you a big salad. When I call a cab on the app, 
the driver chews me out for putting in the wrong address, 
which I hadn't, but I apologize anyway, and when 
she asks me how I learned Italian, I say everybody 

in America speaks Italian, and the taxi driver tells me 
that is certainly not the case but she loves Americans 
anyway because we’re always happy, and then 
she mentions a couple of nationalities that she 
doesn't like and says why. My darling, if our cells
replicate 40 to 60 times before we expire, 

what’s my number right now? 33? 57? I
only know I love you the way a pizza slice 
loves the roof of a little kid’s mouth.
The way the pothole loves the runner’s ankle,
the way air in a tire loves the outside air
but only on a country road after the bars close.

I love you the way Schedule C on Form 1040 
tells you to report the same amount on line 14 
of Form 4562, only there is no Form 4562 
or at least you can’t find it, and some days
I even love you the way a thumb drive might snap 
easily into a USB port but would rather not

and then does. I love you the way an inside-out sock
loves the entire universe, and if that doesn’t make
sense, either, what does? True love is silly. 
True love is mysterious—well, to everyone except perhaps
Indian author Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a lifelong devotee
of Western music who was so worried on 

his wedding night that his bride would not share 
his passion for works by European composers 
that he asked her to spell “Beethoven” and could 
only relax after she did so correctly. Ha, ha! 
That doesn’t sound like Romance With a Capital R
to me, Nirad C. Chaudhuri! When Albert Einstein 

was young and penniless, he considered selling 
insurance to support his girlfriend and child. 
Can you imagine opening your door one day 
and there’s Albert Einstein, asking if you know 
the difference between term life and whole? 
Not that he’d have the white hair and floppy 

mustache, but still. Most people wouldn’t know
it’s Einstein, but you would. You tell me
how lucky we are, and boy howdy, do I ever agree.
What if I’d been born François de La Rochefoucauld
and you the beautiful turquoise-eyed Duchesse
de Longueville, for the love of whom he joined

the rebels in the Wars of the Fronde (1648-1652)
and was severely wounded, lost his wealth 
and most of his eyesight, and, in the end, 
the beautiful turquoise-eyed Duchesse de Longueville!
Those wars also ushered in the oppressive regime
of Louis XIV, which was bad luck for everybody.

When the taxi driver slams on her brakes 
and asks us if she can run into this one store 
and find out how much that red purse in the window costs, 
I’m laughing so hard I can barely say, "Signora, 
you can buy everything in the whole goddamned store 
as far as I'm concerned." I love this city.

DAVID KIRBY

David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His latest books are a poetry collection, The Winter Dance Party: Poems 1983–2023, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. He is currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.