Italian Cat House in Rubble

My father said
when the Germans bombed it,
it was the winter of 1945.

No Italians took the trouble
to clean up the mess
so American soldiers cleared
the rubble
and he shot a picture
of the former pleasure parlor.

The stone penis
and testicles survived.
A wooden shingle hung out
would have been splintered
and no one would have known
the house for what it was.

In spite of the surviving stones,
soldiers were called inside,
to clear what was a grave.

When they carried out
the dead, he said:
They could have been any soldier’s sister.

He told me,
as he had done many time
of two different kinds of women:

those a man wants to take to bed;
those he wants to take care of.
Those he said are the ones to wed.

Before he died,
he clarified his message:
if your love
is dangerously beautiful
when I meet her,
I’ll say keep her.
Life is too short
for any man to have
to sleep alone.