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An Apartment with a View

By John Ciardi 1916–1986 John Ciardi

I am in Rome, Vatican bells tolling

a windowful of God and Bernini.

My neighbor, the Pope, has died

and God overnight, has wept

black mantles over the sainted

stone age whose skirted shadows

flit through to the main cave.

I nurse a cold. It must be error

to sniffle in sight of holiness.

“Liquids,” the doctor said. He has

no cure, but since I have my choice,

I sip champagne. If I must sit

dropsical to Heaven, let me at least

be ritual to a living water.

In the crypt under the cave

the stone box in its stone row

has been marked for months now.

My neighbor knew where he was going.

I half suspect I, too, know,

and that it is nothing to sneeze at,

but am left to sneeze.

I drink my ritual Moët et Chandon

and wish (my taste being misformed

for the high authentic) I had

a California—a Korbel

or an Almaden. I like it “forward,”

as clerics of such matters say,

not schooled to greatness.

It is loud in Heaven today

and in the great stone school

my neighbor kept.

The alumni procession of saints

is forming for him. Bells

clobber the air with portents.

I sniffle and sneeze,

wad kleenex, and sip champagne,

trying to imagine what it might be

to take part in a greatness,

or even in the illusion

of something like. The experience

might deepen my character,

though I am already near

the bottom of it, among wads and butts

of what was once idea. And the last swallow

I do not like the after-taste, if that

is what I am tasting. But this is ritual.

I toast my neighbor: may he

find his glass, and may its after-taste

be all that he was schooled to.

John Ciardi, “An Apartment with a View” from For Instance. Copyright © 1979 by John Ciardi. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Source: The Collected Poems of John Ciardi (1997)

Biography

To millions of Americans, the late John Ciardi was "Mr. Poet, the one who has written, talked, taught, edited, translated, anthologized, criticized, and propelled poetry into a popular, lively art," according to Peter Comer of the Chicago Tribune. Although recognized primarily as a poet and critic, Ciardi's literary endeavors encompassed a vast range of material. From juvenile nonsense poetry to scholarly verse translations, . . .

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