Poetry

Musée d’Orsay

They stroll in and out of the haze of time. Peering at the fractured light of the Impressionists, Not single selves but consolidations Of memories, flickering among brush strokes. And you in a rowboat in the Fifties, Squinting at picnickers at Bethesda Fountain. Above them, bicyclers hunched over and unafraid Race into Harlem, their bodies…

67

I live with my contradictions intact, seeking transcendence but loving bread. I shrug at both and from behind the summer screen I look out upon the dark, knowing death as one form of transcendence, but so is life.

Un tempo/Once

Un tempo tenevo sott'occhio l'atlante degli uccelli scomparsi dalla faccia del mondo opera di un allievo di David ch'era fallito nel genere del quadro storico o in altre monumentali prosopopee pittoriche. Riflettevo su simili ipotetici atlanti di vite senza becco e senza piume da millenni irreperibili, insetti rettili pesci e anche perché no? l'uomo stesso…

Another Museum

Over the Museum of Deportation, six Young violinists and two cellists play A waltz of Strauss, while German tourists dance. Why not? It's fin de siècle France, And having grown middle-aged and tired, you Can live with their Jawohls! for, at least, tonight. Behind you, students lick colorful sorbets, Lovers dance drunkenly, stumble to the…

Oh, By the Way

My friend April Fallon tells me that blood on the exterior of the brain is cooler than that in the interior and that it's in the cooler blood that dreams reside. What do you think? Do you love the head as much as I do? That calcareous shell, the stoniest part of the body. And…

A ritroso/Backwards

Fra i miei ascendenti qualcuno lottò per l'Unità d'Italia, raggiunse alti gradi. portò la greca sul berretto, fu coinvolto in brogli elettorali. Non gl'importava forse nulla di nulla, non m'importa nulla di lui; il suo sepolcro rischia di essere scoperchiato per carenza di terra o marmi o altro. C'è una morte cronologica, una che è…

Stresa–The Borromeo Islands

Since you read Stendhal, Flaubert, De Musset, Isola Bella seemed a hazy dream: Ramparts of gardens rising out of water, Water nymphs stunned into statuary, Grottos where walls of pebbles and mortar Formed sea shells and sea creatures, Rooms with mandolins and violas d'amores, Balustrades where assignations were made With a nod, a wink, the…

July 4, 1989

Rain today, rain tomorrow. Today we shotgunned a copperhead coiled near the front porch, blasted it in half and the head end crawled under a log. Yesterday the Supreme Court said it wanted to kill or enslave my daughter. I exaggerate, I always exaggerate. I cleaned the shotgun with a wad of oiled rag and…