Hanging on the narrowing wall,
a Sicilian panorama drifts in browns-
vines clamber up an adobe mission;
clay pots in plenty a sign of bounty.
A solitary woman in mute blue and red carries one of them
along the foreground.
There’s no one else in the scene,
since the men are inside watching the game.
I think if she doesn’t hurry,
the vines will crack the ground beneath her feet,
and ensconce her as well;
earthenware
lifted to God under the bronzing sun for eternity.
Forgive me.
I am visionless,
weakened,
mute.
I am scarlet ashes dying under the indigo moon,
I’m nothing that I am.
I’m quite like the foolish boy
who gazed upon Ptesan Wi.
His vision was clouded,
cinereal,
smoke,
for the rest of his days.
Chateau Margaux
1947
slithers down the stem,
from the bowl,
left on the rim
by your lips;
red-satin
below your brown-swirl eyes,
mirroring constellations
above quai de la Tournelle
and the Seine
in silken ebony.
Lights! Spread before us
like so many gems
inside a store we would not
be allowed…
The glow mixes with
steam,
smoke,
coffee vapours,
sprigs of rosemary,
candle wax.
The night so pure,
yet with not enough air for words;
and the silence is broken by a cloud-drop
making your cigarette
hiss in its long filter.
Let us retire to our homes;
for have you kissed someone in the rain?
No?
Nor I.
Two ordinary humans, set on a sidewalk, will
inevitably stand, and walk simply
of their own accord
to the next relevant business.
The same humans, when
approaching one to the other, falter softly,
precariously, as if on a ridge or trip-wire,
trying to shift about in a strange tap
of strangers bound by a curved ribbon.
And if curved, then on one
parabolic
continuous loop,
not unlike the quantifiable outcomes
of a Mobius strip.
Causality would seem to be
the perpetual function
more of the effect
than the cause.
Litany_of_the_Lost 