7th Annual Juried Reading
Third Place Poet
Judith Valente

Judith Valente is an on-air correspondent for the national PBS-TV news show Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Her poems have appeared in the Chicago literary journals, such as Rhino and AfterHours. Her poem Inventing the Alphabet was nominated for a 2001 Pushcart Prize. She is completing a MFA degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dec. 31, 1999

The workers at Leonardo DaVinci are going home early,
       swinging blue panettone boxes from a string.

Outside, the airport rises like a launching pad for the Jetsons,
       all white, swooping and space-age,

and herefords graze in a nearby pasture. Everyone's
       still smoking up a storm in Italy, N80s and Lucky Strikes,

Loo-kees the Italians say, and over-dressing in black.
       It's Dec. 31, 1999. Some of us wonder

if the world will end at midnight or something slightly less ultimate.
       Like apostles, Ernie, Raphael, Father Mike and I,

eat our meals around an oak table, top floor at Viccolo Maroni:
       bread, wine, parmesano, prosciutto, and persimmon,

the one Raphael peels unhurriedly for me, so moist, fleshy
       and blood-orange lush, I think it must have been persimmon

not pomegranite that sealed Proserpina's fate. For days
       we have feasted on music and art:

Gorecki and Berlioz at Santa Maria Degli Angeli.
       Locatelli and Telemann at San Giovanni Bosco, and now

our mouths are awash in the after-taste of a hundred Madonnas:
       Fra Angelico's Virgin guarding her breasts against

the blonde, effeminate angel. Martini's Mary, who conceives
       the instant the angel penetrates her ear with a stream of Greek.

In Kyoto and Tokyo, police have sealed trash bins and mail boxes
       to guard against terrorist bombs, but here

in Trastevere, sparkling lights, red and white,
       jangle from clothes lines where young mothers hang

their bancheria to dry. The Pope is criss-crossing the city,
       opening Holy Doors fast as his wavery, Parkinsoned feet can carry him,

so tomorrow Il Jubileo will report how "The Holy Father moved
       silently toward the Door, chanted the verse

Iusti intrabut in eam, then opened the Door using both hands."
       Trash cans are overflowing with spumonte bottles and

A crowd's formed at the Vatican post office,
       people wanting to send letters postmarked before Armageddon.

Shopping for wine, Father Mike and I say stupid things, like,
       "Last sunset of the century," or "Last gelato of the millennium,"

at San Callisto run into Ludovico, our tuttofare,
       who has already drunk a great deal of wine, asks

Father Mike for a blessing, gets one in English and Latin,
       then demands to be kissed on each cheek, or else

"it isn't a real blessing." At San Giovanni Laterno
       women with shawled hair, children in wool sweaters

and even a few men line up to make their confession,
       afterwards wriggle up the Hold Stairs on their knees,

all 38 marble steps they say once stood at Pilate's Palace,
       touched Jesus' feet.

All day long, from Caserta to Livorno, Fiumadinisi to Trieste,
       the bit players have poured in on the rails and now

a minute to midnight, a single candle blinks
       in the Pope's private quarters, his French windows open,

someone rolls out the yellow and white papal flag,
       and he appears a white feather, floating above the crowd,

raises his hand, shouts Nastrovev. A woman we don't know
       offers us plastic cups and champagne from her own bottle.

People are hopping on one foot, hugging, crying, cheering
       due mille, due mille, shaking white handkerchiefs

in the quickening air as the first fireworks
       burst and bloom over St. Peter's Square.

This looks not like the end of the world, but the beginning.
       Let the cows sleep soundly tonight in fields tonight.

Let blessings be on both cheeks. Let all doors be holy.
       Let the pure laundry dry on dusty lines.

- Judith Valente

(C) 2001 The Poetry Center of Chicago
All Rights Revert Back to the Author Upon Publication.
No Portion of this poem may be reproduced without the expressed permission of the author.