Prayer for Italian Restaurants
What happens to the ancient bottles
of Chianti and Barbaresco
congealing into stalagmites of wax?
Where shall we congregate
after the blackboards are repainted
and red sauce rusts
on discarded whites?
These portals have greeted us
beyond that regular dream
of an indifferent city. Puttanesca,
pesto, focaccia, let us count
a well-seasoned Bolognese
as a universal welcome home.
Allow us inside the glass counters
lined with cheese and salami,
bedding beside plastic onions
tomatoes and parsley sprigs,
wrapped forever in tablecloths
of red oil cloth. In Soho,
Camden and Holloway, throughout
the subtle lanes of Highbury,
leave us to the easy choices
of our younger days,
when they waited around us,
regular as sonnets on our streets.
Daniel Bennett was born in Shropshire and lives and works in London. His poems have been widely published, most recently in The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 from Eyewear Books. He’s also the author of the novel, All the Dogs.
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