Why Get so ExcitedAuthor(s): Jack GilbertSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1985), p. 74Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20156179 .

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Eight Poems 'Jack Gilbert

Why Get So Excited

Are the angels of her bed the angels who come near me alone in mine?

Are the trees so green in her head

maybe the purples I find on plums? When she says like steel and fire

I think secretly and with tenderness

of wet mouths. And when she tries

to tell of it, saying shoe and pillow and river meaning melting lords

of death, avalanches of crows and long,

long moments of passing through, do I say yes, yes, shoes and rivers?

In Umbr?a

Once upon a time I was sitting outside the cafe

watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came

from the bakery with the bread her mother wanted

and did not know what to do. Already bewildered

by being thirteen and just that summer a woman.

Now had to walk right by the American man.

But she did great. Went past and around the corner

with style, not noticing me. Almost perfect. At the last second could not resist darting a look

down at her new breasts. Often I go back

to that dip of her head when people talk to me

about this one or that one of the great beauties.

74

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