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A Marriage in the Dolomites

By D. Nurkse D. Nurkse

We communicated by cheeses,

unwrapping them gingerly,

parting the crust with a fork,

tasting dew, must, salt,

raising an eyebrow,

or we let chianti talk for us,

rolling it in the glass,

staring—it was dark and shiny

as the pupil, and stared back—

or we undressed each other;

we took long walks hand in hand

in the vineyards, the pastures,

resenting each other bitterly

for our happiness that excluded us

as surely as the world did,

mountain after mountain.

Source: Poetry (June 2009).

Biography

D. Nurkse is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Rules of Paradise (2001), The Fall (2003), and The Border Kingdom (2008). His parents escaped Nazi Europe during World War II—his Estonian father worked for the League of Nations in Vienna, his mother was an artist—and moved to New York. Nurkse’s family moved back to live in Europe for a number of years, returning to the United States around the time of the . . .

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