One afternoon in my room,

in Rome,

I found, wedged

next to the wheel of a wardrobe,

so far under

no maid’s broom could touch it,

a pouch made from a sock.

Inside were diamonds

in several sizes. Spread on the carpet,

they caught in my throat.

I knew that, from that moment on,

I would never answer the door.

All of my holiday

would be a preparation

for leaving. First,

I would have to leave the hotel,

probably the city.

I knew someone I could trust

and another with nerve.

She would carry

home half of them, perhaps in her underwear,

if it was not the kind

customs officers like to touch.

I would carry the others

by way of Zurich,

stopping to purchase

eucalyptus cigarettes, chocolates

and a modest music box

with its insides exposed.

After that, who knows?

Keep them for years?

Lug them into the shade and sell cheap?

A trip to a third country?

A middleman?

So long as I didn’t look up,

there were the stones before me

in the old room in the old city—

where embellishment of every fixture

and centuries of detail

took precedence

over every consideration

of light, air or space—

so long as I did not look up

to my suspicion,

I held the endless light of a fortune

and the course of a lifetime.

 

 

In retrospect, it was entirely appropirate

that my diamonds

were the ordinary pieces 

of a chandelier, one string of which

had been pulled down

by a previous tenant of room three,

perhaps in a fit of ecstasy.

For I found, also—a diamond-

shaped thord of its cover

hanging down from behind the wardrobe,

face to the wall—

the current issue of one of those men’s

monthlies in which half-

nude women, glossy with wealth,

ooze to escape

from their lingerie.

And in the single page in its center,

someone had held his favorite

long enough to make love.

The pages were stuck together elsewhere also,

in no pattern,

and the articles on clothing and manners

left untouched.

 

So this was no ordinary hotel room,

or the most ordinary of all!

Men had come here many times no doubt

to make love by themselves.

But now

it was also a place of hidden treasure.

The rush of wealth and dark promise

I took from that room

I also put back. And so too eveyrone

who, when in Rome,

will do what the Romans do.