Appeal to the Grammarians

The temperature’s rising. Time to think about eating outside and settling in at a sidewalk cafe to watch the world go by. But beware! Dangers lurk everywhere and we need new punctuation to express our outraged reaction to a whole range of disasters. I love Paul Violi’s list in this poem. And – when you do venture out, sit down and order that cappuccino and cannoli – I hope you have better luck than he did.

Appeal to the Grammarians

We, the naturally hopeful,

Need a simple sign

For the myriad ways we’re capsized.

We who love precise language

Need a finer way to convey

Disappointment and perplexity.

For speechlessness and all its inflections,

For up-ended expectations,

For every time we’re ambushed

By trivial or stupefying irony,

For pure incredulity, we need

The inverted exclamation point.

For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,

For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift

Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,

Or felt love or pond ice

Give way underfoot, we deserve it.

We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,

The child whose ball doesn’t bounce back,

The flat tire at journey’s outset,

The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.

But mainly because I need it – here and now

As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio

Staring at my espresso and cannoli

After this middle-aged couple

Came strolling by and he suddenly

Veered and sneezed all over my table

And she said to him, “See, that’s why

I don’t like to eat outside.”

– Paul Violi

The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum Arles at Night, also known as Café Terrace at Night Vincent Van Gogh September 1888.

The Café Terrace.1915 Diego Rivera (1886–1957) And here is another Café Terrace. This time just a table. Cubism and pointillism to show just one table with a green bottle – presumably absinthe with metal spoon, a strip of camouflage tablecloth cloth and a triangle from a Mexican cigar boxshowing a miniature landscape.

Isaac Maimon (French/Israeli, b.1951) Sidewalk Café

Moriz Jung (1885–1915) Café Heinrichhof, 1912

Old Karlsbad: Café Helenenhof. Leopold Drexler 1909

Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: A woman passing a café. Maurice Brazil Prendergast 1895-97

The featured image is from Falafel on MacDougal by Gwen Meyerson that also shows the Caffe Reggio in Greenwich Village, NY. – favorite location for many movies starting with Shaft in 1971. JFK made a campaign speech outside the cafe in 1960. Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan had coffee. Andy Warhol came here after leaving the hospital after being shot in 1968. It is also where, it is claimed, the first cappuccino in America was served.