Meeting Milosz

I had just picked up Unattainable Earth,

a misprint at the Winter Park library book sale

and brought it with us to Venice,

the Serenissima, home of Pound and Byron.

We lived in the "sad apartments" in Alberoni

and I started a correspondence course in poetry.

Pre-internet days, I wandered San Michele, looking for Byron's grave

but his final resting place is home in England. 

The expectation of poolside days at Hotel des Bains

was a fantasy, too.

Gifted a Guggenheim fellowship, 

as an American intern, we sold books or guarded the priceless collection.

Spent many days with Magritte, Dali, Pollack, Rufino Tamayo, Peggy's ghost.

One day, reading about Peggy's father who went down with the Titanic,

a kindly gentleman with bushy eyebrows struck up a conversation.

Not a fine art or art history major, I was a student of poetry, I said.

He paused, picked up a book, and thumbed through it.

"Have you ever heard of Czeslaw Milosz?"

Well, yes, I have, I stumbled and stuttered about the recent book I owned 

but hadn't read yet. His eyes sparkled

and this is what I hold -- the autograph of Gwendolyn Brooks and 

a passing conversation with the great, great Czeslaw Milosz.