Badfingered boy
With a pocketful of menaces,
I stalk and lurk
In cobwebbedorridors
Past doors with windows
Of frosted glass.
A death full and rounded
As the life it contains,
That is what –if a genie
Should appear from this bottle
Of wine-I would ask for.
Blessed and cursed,
I consecrate myself each day
To the vow I first made as a boy,
To mine life deep and true.
(To fix experience
In a passable manner,
That will do,
And is probably more
Than I can manage).
I am the keeper of manuscripts,
In love with a dark quatrain;
Contradiction and distraction
Divide me with fierce glee,
Lost twin seeking home.
The angelus of other days
Tolls its summons,
But I linger under arches
And silently wait.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Chaotic Orbit
January crowns me with snow,
Moulds me in cold molten sunlight and holds me,
The ground beneath straining like a whale’s back
Shrugging up from the waves.
O God, unclench my core,
Gather the skies into myself,
Crying freedom, freedom, freedom…
When a young wandering scholar I was, slovenly and caprylic,
Sniffing musty books like fine wines,
Shagging imaginary tarts in the heart’s knocking-shop,
I brokered dodgy deals with time,
Master of insider trading.
It’s my round,
What are you drinking?
The top shelf,
From left to right.
To Shakespeare I present a lily,
To Byron a rose;
Which of them, I wonder,
Had the bigger nose?
Moulds me in cold molten sunlight and holds me,
The ground beneath straining like a whale’s back
Shrugging up from the waves.
O God, unclench my core,
Gather the skies into myself,
Crying freedom, freedom, freedom…
When a young wandering scholar I was, slovenly and caprylic,
Sniffing musty books like fine wines,
Shagging imaginary tarts in the heart’s knocking-shop,
I brokered dodgy deals with time,
Master of insider trading.
It’s my round,
What are you drinking?
The top shelf,
From left to right.
To Shakespeare I present a lily,
To Byron a rose;
Which of them, I wonder,
Had the bigger nose?
Tiny Earthquakes
Playing cards whirl in the autumn wind.
Embedded fossils hoard their primal capture
In pockmarked suburban facades.
Strangers ooze automatic venom,
Squint through windows they long to smash,
And watch the evening fall on television.
The physics of history entraps us
In action and reaction,
Wars, earthquakes and avalanches
Occurring with similar patterns,
The tiniest actions reverberating
With immense unforeseeable results.
(And,for my next trick,
I might catch kuru
And turn into a cannibal,
Giggling myself to death).
Oh me and my wonderful career:
To swallow the mercury of irksome labour
And scrape like a mouse in the wainscot
Of the moneymaker’s lair…
To handle the excrement of money
And lose the happy leisure soul demands,
The vagabondage dear to human growth.
Economic conscripts, we parade and march
To the drum, and shine our caps and buttons
Till the cannon cut us down…
Bile’s quicklime sears the gullet,
As I make neat piles of ash, day by day,
And pray for a minor promotion, a little more cash.
I sit and practise my card tricks:
Four Burglars,
Invisible Deck,
The Acme of Control.
This viciousness within me
Revels in cruelty and assault,
Apt to torture and flay any foe
For the least slight.
Petrus Ramus,after fifty books on logic,
Was murdered in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre,
His fine blackbearded head lopped off
And tossed into the Seine.
Embedded fossils hoard their primal capture
In pockmarked suburban facades.
Strangers ooze automatic venom,
Squint through windows they long to smash,
And watch the evening fall on television.
The physics of history entraps us
In action and reaction,
Wars, earthquakes and avalanches
Occurring with similar patterns,
The tiniest actions reverberating
With immense unforeseeable results.
(And,for my next trick,
I might catch kuru
And turn into a cannibal,
Giggling myself to death).
Oh me and my wonderful career:
To swallow the mercury of irksome labour
And scrape like a mouse in the wainscot
Of the moneymaker’s lair…
To handle the excrement of money
And lose the happy leisure soul demands,
The vagabondage dear to human growth.
Economic conscripts, we parade and march
To the drum, and shine our caps and buttons
Till the cannon cut us down…
Bile’s quicklime sears the gullet,
As I make neat piles of ash, day by day,
And pray for a minor promotion, a little more cash.
I sit and practise my card tricks:
Four Burglars,
Invisible Deck,
The Acme of Control.
This viciousness within me
Revels in cruelty and assault,
Apt to torture and flay any foe
For the least slight.
Petrus Ramus,after fifty books on logic,
Was murdered in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre,
His fine blackbearded head lopped off
And tossed into the Seine.
Grail Kings
Dragons among men,the truth-sovereigns
Reign in crimson mantles,
Sceptred with bold knowledge and prosperity.
With golden goblets they toast the sun,
And feast on all the world’s delicacies,
While silver lyres play eulogies
To these twigs of the great tree.
Gift of the black Dragon Queen,
The Mark of Cain, a cross within a circle,
Protects the quarters of the realm;
She lifts the Dew Cup in salute,
The Venus orb brimming with blood royal,
As the line spirals through generations,
Under the moon’s red authority.
Hail the swan I have loved all my life,-
White fire of land,sky and water united-
Under whose wings hide eternal ideas!
Thirty-three degrees of knowledge
Burn in my brain’s nectar, red gold
Of the pineal gland,-come,scarlet woman,
Bless me with the lily in your hand!
Reign in crimson mantles,
Sceptred with bold knowledge and prosperity.
With golden goblets they toast the sun,
And feast on all the world’s delicacies,
While silver lyres play eulogies
To these twigs of the great tree.
Gift of the black Dragon Queen,
The Mark of Cain, a cross within a circle,
Protects the quarters of the realm;
She lifts the Dew Cup in salute,
The Venus orb brimming with blood royal,
As the line spirals through generations,
Under the moon’s red authority.
Hail the swan I have loved all my life,-
White fire of land,sky and water united-
Under whose wings hide eternal ideas!
Thirty-three degrees of knowledge
Burn in my brain’s nectar, red gold
Of the pineal gland,-come,scarlet woman,
Bless me with the lily in your hand!
Ontology
To die like Montesquieu, in the arms of his lover,
An unfinished essay on taste by his side;
Having lived to some purpose,
Learned a little, and cherished the good.
Can we carry our questions with us
Over there, whence they seem to come?
Or will they remain here, gloating like ghouls,
Richer and more powerful than we ever were?
As Hegel said, dying of cholera,
“Only one man ever understood me...
And he didn’t understand me...”
Ask what is human, what is me;
It is the grief, the separation....
How I envy Julius Canus,
Who, condemned to death by Caesar,
Was playing draughts when the executioner came.
Counting the pieces, he smiled at his companion,
“See that you don’t falsely claim after my death that you won,”
Then calmly rose and walked out through the door.
An unfinished essay on taste by his side;
Having lived to some purpose,
Learned a little, and cherished the good.
Can we carry our questions with us
Over there, whence they seem to come?
Or will they remain here, gloating like ghouls,
Richer and more powerful than we ever were?
As Hegel said, dying of cholera,
“Only one man ever understood me...
And he didn’t understand me...”
Ask what is human, what is me;
It is the grief, the separation....
How I envy Julius Canus,
Who, condemned to death by Caesar,
Was playing draughts when the executioner came.
Counting the pieces, he smiled at his companion,
“See that you don’t falsely claim after my death that you won,”
Then calmly rose and walked out through the door.
Cantor Dust
Patterns of weather
Like the bark on a tree,
Like lichen boulders tumbled in glacial landscape,
Like swallows scattering over the fields...
Inside the beehive,
I live the unpredictable,the irregular,
The tiniest factors
Coalescing in each act.
The universe exploding,expanding,
Swirling gases and star fields,
Ever more detailed the closer you peer...
And,as twin foetuses grow in the womb,
The cells migrate into different patterns,
So alike,yet distinct...
Another leaf is dropping into the stream,
A pebble starts to roll, an avalanche triggered...
The branching of a fern
And the shape of a thunderstorm
Dance in the cracking of ice on the springtime river....
I hold up my hand
And it turns into a shark’s fin,
An oriole’s wing,
A feather.
The transformer is transformed,
As one word is changed in the poem,
One brushstroke on the canvas.
Monstrous grace of the furiously inelegant!
The rhythms of enzymes and viruses,
The actions of the brain,
The dizzy percolation of rain through rock,
Microscopic macrocosmic beauties,
Endless forms recurring and transmuting,-
Lunatic world- delight,
Irregular as a ginger root!
See the compositions of starfish,
Washed up on the shore
By fabulous chance.
Here,in my niche,
My opportunity for evolution,
I revel in geological folds of time,
Sine curves of emotion.
Minute as a mite in a bee’s trachea,
I linger in the jagged ragged world.
How many grains can one add to the sandpile
Before it collapses with a sigh?
What happens on the moons of Jupiter
Happens in my front room;
It is all such fun,
Collapsing neutron stars spinning madly,
Supernovas bursting like spider eggs full of new stars,
Suns vomiting magnetic storms across the void...
From the coasts of my mind
I can see the deadly ocean,
All maelstroms,wrecks and ghosts ships sailing by.
I was born to curving country roads
And crumpled hills.
The progress of a forest fire
Or disease through an apple orchard-
Bizarre wonders branch into the eye
And out through the fingertips.
Dark swarms of prisms whirl through me,
Egyptian pyramids of love and fire;
Moonrise finds me skulking
Like a scorpion under a touchstone.
A seed crystal is falling through the atmosphere,
Its hexagon growing at the dizzy boundary,
Combining chaos and order in flight.
Frankenstein’s monster of time and weather,
I plunge into the badlands,
Happy as the spiral in a firefly’s eye,
Noting the whorls and scrolls
Of chemical reactions,
The first signs of life on earth.
Heart attacks,tsunamis, a sudden waterspout erupting
From still seas,-from an absolute coalescence
Of conditions, the unforeseen arrives,
Storming the fortress of the blind.
The crossroads calls me to its gallows-
Which way now?
Like the bark on a tree,
Like lichen boulders tumbled in glacial landscape,
Like swallows scattering over the fields...
Inside the beehive,
I live the unpredictable,the irregular,
The tiniest factors
Coalescing in each act.
The universe exploding,expanding,
Swirling gases and star fields,
Ever more detailed the closer you peer...
And,as twin foetuses grow in the womb,
The cells migrate into different patterns,
So alike,yet distinct...
Another leaf is dropping into the stream,
A pebble starts to roll, an avalanche triggered...
The branching of a fern
And the shape of a thunderstorm
Dance in the cracking of ice on the springtime river....
I hold up my hand
And it turns into a shark’s fin,
An oriole’s wing,
A feather.
The transformer is transformed,
As one word is changed in the poem,
One brushstroke on the canvas.
Monstrous grace of the furiously inelegant!
The rhythms of enzymes and viruses,
The actions of the brain,
The dizzy percolation of rain through rock,
Microscopic macrocosmic beauties,
Endless forms recurring and transmuting,-
Lunatic world- delight,
Irregular as a ginger root!
See the compositions of starfish,
Washed up on the shore
By fabulous chance.
Here,in my niche,
My opportunity for evolution,
I revel in geological folds of time,
Sine curves of emotion.
Minute as a mite in a bee’s trachea,
I linger in the jagged ragged world.
How many grains can one add to the sandpile
Before it collapses with a sigh?
What happens on the moons of Jupiter
Happens in my front room;
It is all such fun,
Collapsing neutron stars spinning madly,
Supernovas bursting like spider eggs full of new stars,
Suns vomiting magnetic storms across the void...
From the coasts of my mind
I can see the deadly ocean,
All maelstroms,wrecks and ghosts ships sailing by.
I was born to curving country roads
And crumpled hills.
The progress of a forest fire
Or disease through an apple orchard-
Bizarre wonders branch into the eye
And out through the fingertips.
Dark swarms of prisms whirl through me,
Egyptian pyramids of love and fire;
Moonrise finds me skulking
Like a scorpion under a touchstone.
A seed crystal is falling through the atmosphere,
Its hexagon growing at the dizzy boundary,
Combining chaos and order in flight.
Frankenstein’s monster of time and weather,
I plunge into the badlands,
Happy as the spiral in a firefly’s eye,
Noting the whorls and scrolls
Of chemical reactions,
The first signs of life on earth.
Heart attacks,tsunamis, a sudden waterspout erupting
From still seas,-from an absolute coalescence
Of conditions, the unforeseen arrives,
Storming the fortress of the blind.
The crossroads calls me to its gallows-
Which way now?
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Mozambique
The mask and the dance are yours
And you belong to them.
This is Africa,
Where death is just a slowing
Of time.
Malaria trawls the blood,
Plotting a fever chart
Of deaths and resurrections.
Gold trader of words,
Smelt your life
In the sunrise;
The Indian Ocean
Commands you,
Calls you down.
Remember:
Nobody knows where the names come from.
The living are hopeful and the dead are very patient.
Placid as dugong grazing sea grass shallows,
I breathe water, earth’s memory,
Alchemist in a laboratory of dreams.
Barefoot up the mountain
To the humpback whale herds of clouds
Where forbears’ voices cascade,
Zambezi,
Limpopo.
And you belong to them.
This is Africa,
Where death is just a slowing
Of time.
Malaria trawls the blood,
Plotting a fever chart
Of deaths and resurrections.
Gold trader of words,
Smelt your life
In the sunrise;
The Indian Ocean
Commands you,
Calls you down.
Remember:
Nobody knows where the names come from.
The living are hopeful and the dead are very patient.
Placid as dugong grazing sea grass shallows,
I breathe water, earth’s memory,
Alchemist in a laboratory of dreams.
Barefoot up the mountain
To the humpback whale herds of clouds
Where forbears’ voices cascade,
Zambezi,
Limpopo.
Hours and Minutes
Tomorrow is a shrug of the shoulders,
A coin lost down the back of the sofa.
Time is all I have learned and am learning.
So much happens
When nothing is occurring,
Trillionfold incident and accidence
On the peripheries of the senses,
Rhythms too subtle
Except for music.
One hundred trillion cells,
Clocking their destinies,
And the suprachiasmatic nuclei
Pulse with invincible precision,
Even as the corpse decays.
All I know of time is movement,
Ravel’s Bolero in my head,
A single repeating melody and rhythm,
Volume and timbre changing,
From whisper to fortissimo,
Sublime monotony.
The beating of a mosquito’s wings
And the malaria of time
Penetrates the bloodstream;
A tenth of a second-
Is that a moment?
It is all I can grasp...
Bewildered as those medieval theologians,
Trying to calculate the exact time
Christ’s resurrection took.
The so few times,the so few experiences
Of a lifetime(how many more moonrises
Might I notice, let alone see?)
Coded and migrating through the mind,
The alchemical apparatus of the brain...
(Lightning in the locus coeruleus,
Up and down, stimuli of emotions)
Neurons and dendrites
Jungle the spaces I move through,
Ridiculously human,alone and conjoined,
Expert in thresholds
And sad at some point each day.
“Before” and “after”,”earlier” and “later”,-
Bedevil my mind-and the childhood
Ahead of me, behind, all around...
A coin lost down the back of the sofa.
Time is all I have learned and am learning.
So much happens
When nothing is occurring,
Trillionfold incident and accidence
On the peripheries of the senses,
Rhythms too subtle
Except for music.
One hundred trillion cells,
Clocking their destinies,
And the suprachiasmatic nuclei
Pulse with invincible precision,
Even as the corpse decays.
All I know of time is movement,
Ravel’s Bolero in my head,
A single repeating melody and rhythm,
Volume and timbre changing,
From whisper to fortissimo,
Sublime monotony.
The beating of a mosquito’s wings
And the malaria of time
Penetrates the bloodstream;
A tenth of a second-
Is that a moment?
It is all I can grasp...
Bewildered as those medieval theologians,
Trying to calculate the exact time
Christ’s resurrection took.
The so few times,the so few experiences
Of a lifetime(how many more moonrises
Might I notice, let alone see?)
Coded and migrating through the mind,
The alchemical apparatus of the brain...
(Lightning in the locus coeruleus,
Up and down, stimuli of emotions)
Neurons and dendrites
Jungle the spaces I move through,
Ridiculously human,alone and conjoined,
Expert in thresholds
And sad at some point each day.
“Before” and “after”,”earlier” and “later”,-
Bedevil my mind-and the childhood
Ahead of me, behind, all around...
Florentine Alignments
Scalding hot cioccolata con panna
At the Caffé Rivoire on the Piazza della Signoria,
On a damp clinging winter day,
With so very little to hold onto,
So very little in the world…
Yet this richness thrills me,
Burning a hole in my tongue.
In the church of Santa Felicita,
I slip the custodian a tip to switch the lights on
And there is Pontormo’s Deposition, revealed,
All vivid pinks, greens, ochres and blues,
Christ’s body swooning in death’s dream
As he is lifted and hefted down,
Wondrous and weird.
In Peter Bazzanti and Son’s bottega,
Among reproductions of ancient Roman bronzes,
Fauns, satyrs,gods and goddesses, Socrates and Homer,
Antinous and Mithras, and all the rest,
I ponder my own ersatz antiquity,
Northern barbarian in classical garb,
Polishing my rhetoric in provincial accent.
In the Museo La Specola, I wander
Among the waxworks of human bodies,
Serene exquisite anatomies,
Dissected, disembowelled, skinned, decomposing,
Gazing out with open expressive eyes.
That fierce speculation of the Florentines
Has inspired me all my years.
Searching out the masters’ Cenacoli,-
Ghirlandaio’s in San Marco and Ognissanti,
Andrea del Castagno’s in the nunnery of Sant’Apollonia,
Perugino’s in the Convent of Sant’Onofrio,
Andrea del Sarto’s in the church of San Salvi-
I almost hear the deep music of Europe,
(As a boy I dreamt of astonishing the world,
All would hail me a universal genius,
Supreme in my every endeavour,
Surpassing all rivals with divine ease and grace).
In the Laurentian Library’s vestibule,
I thrill to the organised expansion of space,
The monolithic columns soaring,
The staircase of giants ascending
To princely celestial heights,
Just to mount these steps is to swell
With regal pride, the puissance of art
To fashion worlds beyond the common mind
With elegant force, brooking no mean restraint,
No petty taxation of the spirit.
See here how space is bent and forged
On the mind’s anvil, heated to fury,
Folded, mirrored, turned inside out,
With a will to dazzle and beguile,
These worshipful walls calculated to retain
The duke, their centre and focus.
In the sotterraneo of the Sagrestia Nuovo,
I scan the drawings, sketches and doodles
On the walls, made by Michelangelo,
Hiding from the Spaniards
During the siege of 1530,
In the darkness and silence,
He took some pitch from a wall torch
And, to forget his fears,
Covered the walls and ceilings
Of this tiny cave with images from his mind.
At the Caffé Rivoire on the Piazza della Signoria,
On a damp clinging winter day,
With so very little to hold onto,
So very little in the world…
Yet this richness thrills me,
Burning a hole in my tongue.
In the church of Santa Felicita,
I slip the custodian a tip to switch the lights on
And there is Pontormo’s Deposition, revealed,
All vivid pinks, greens, ochres and blues,
Christ’s body swooning in death’s dream
As he is lifted and hefted down,
Wondrous and weird.
In Peter Bazzanti and Son’s bottega,
Among reproductions of ancient Roman bronzes,
Fauns, satyrs,gods and goddesses, Socrates and Homer,
Antinous and Mithras, and all the rest,
I ponder my own ersatz antiquity,
Northern barbarian in classical garb,
Polishing my rhetoric in provincial accent.
In the Museo La Specola, I wander
Among the waxworks of human bodies,
Serene exquisite anatomies,
Dissected, disembowelled, skinned, decomposing,
Gazing out with open expressive eyes.
That fierce speculation of the Florentines
Has inspired me all my years.
Searching out the masters’ Cenacoli,-
Ghirlandaio’s in San Marco and Ognissanti,
Andrea del Castagno’s in the nunnery of Sant’Apollonia,
Perugino’s in the Convent of Sant’Onofrio,
Andrea del Sarto’s in the church of San Salvi-
I almost hear the deep music of Europe,
(As a boy I dreamt of astonishing the world,
All would hail me a universal genius,
Supreme in my every endeavour,
Surpassing all rivals with divine ease and grace).
In the Laurentian Library’s vestibule,
I thrill to the organised expansion of space,
The monolithic columns soaring,
The staircase of giants ascending
To princely celestial heights,
Just to mount these steps is to swell
With regal pride, the puissance of art
To fashion worlds beyond the common mind
With elegant force, brooking no mean restraint,
No petty taxation of the spirit.
See here how space is bent and forged
On the mind’s anvil, heated to fury,
Folded, mirrored, turned inside out,
With a will to dazzle and beguile,
These worshipful walls calculated to retain
The duke, their centre and focus.
In the sotterraneo of the Sagrestia Nuovo,
I scan the drawings, sketches and doodles
On the walls, made by Michelangelo,
Hiding from the Spaniards
During the siege of 1530,
In the darkness and silence,
He took some pitch from a wall torch
And, to forget his fears,
Covered the walls and ceilings
Of this tiny cave with images from his mind.
Sicilian Vespers
I cherish the early mornings,
The smell of coffee and warm succulent bread,
As the sun saunters in like Cagliostro,
Promising riches and eternal life.
Death, like almond blossoms,
Smells sweet and falls on my head.
(Frutti alla martorana in the pasticceria window:
Perfect marzipan imitations
Of peaches, oranges and prickly pears…)
And I think of Goethe fleeing fame
And the dark skies of Germany,
Under a false name, over a barrel,
Nodding at the Masonic handshake of time,
Seeing Venus in every chambermaid’s rump,
Measuring Greek statues with ponderous delight.
In the Galleria Regionale in Palermo
The fresco The Triumph of Death:
In the centre Death the Archer
Rides a ghostly horse with ribs protruding
As he plucks off bishops, kings and ladies,
While all around the elegant people
Entertain themselves, oblivious,
Playing music, chatting, riding out to hunt,
And only the poor and diseased
Are aware of Death’s presence
And turn to him, entreating release
From earthly misery.
In the Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico
The allegorical statues of the Virtues
Saucily model the most opulent fashions,
While all over the walls anarchic putti
Ride piggyback on one another,
Mischievously yanking each other’s willies.
In the Convento dei Cappuccini
The mummified corpses of thousands
Hang on the catacomb walls
According to their earthly station,
Dressed in their everyday clothes,
So many children among them.
I walk though the Villa Palagonia in Bagheria,
Like Ferdinando Gravina
Under the sign of his coat-of-arms,
A satyr holding up a mirror
To a woman with a horse’s head;
(Vicious jealousy as he spies on his young wife,
Every twist of her body and mind
He must possess,and deny to others,
Every glory of his own madness
He must force upon the world)
The stone monsters in the garden,
Leering, writhing, sneering, snarling,
And the house fitted with strange distorting mirrors
And furniture made of broken teapots,
And chairs with spikes hidden under the cushions.
In the ruins of Motya
I stand before the tophet
Where Phoenician women would sacrifice their firstborn
To the goddess Tanit;
In the museum stand hundreds
Of burial urns and funeral stelae
For the infant victims.
And here are the tiny ornamental braziers
Used by Phoenician ladies
To burn myrrh and spikenard.
The Torre di Federico II in Enna,
High among the mountain clouds,
Absolute centre of Sicily:
The Emperor built this octagon
To mark the hub of the Trinacria;
Ascend the spiral stairway
To the top,and grasp the entire isle
With the mind,believing in one
Geomantic design,submitting
All earth to the heavens.
Uncanny light of Strómboli,
Melancholy abandoned isle of weird musings:
Climb, climb the volcano ,
Red sparks flaring up from the firefountain
As the god rumbles below;
Your dreams’ smouldering magma
Will light up the night.
The smell of coffee and warm succulent bread,
As the sun saunters in like Cagliostro,
Promising riches and eternal life.
Death, like almond blossoms,
Smells sweet and falls on my head.
(Frutti alla martorana in the pasticceria window:
Perfect marzipan imitations
Of peaches, oranges and prickly pears…)
And I think of Goethe fleeing fame
And the dark skies of Germany,
Under a false name, over a barrel,
Nodding at the Masonic handshake of time,
Seeing Venus in every chambermaid’s rump,
Measuring Greek statues with ponderous delight.
In the Galleria Regionale in Palermo
The fresco The Triumph of Death:
In the centre Death the Archer
Rides a ghostly horse with ribs protruding
As he plucks off bishops, kings and ladies,
While all around the elegant people
Entertain themselves, oblivious,
Playing music, chatting, riding out to hunt,
And only the poor and diseased
Are aware of Death’s presence
And turn to him, entreating release
From earthly misery.
In the Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico
The allegorical statues of the Virtues
Saucily model the most opulent fashions,
While all over the walls anarchic putti
Ride piggyback on one another,
Mischievously yanking each other’s willies.
In the Convento dei Cappuccini
The mummified corpses of thousands
Hang on the catacomb walls
According to their earthly station,
Dressed in their everyday clothes,
So many children among them.
I walk though the Villa Palagonia in Bagheria,
Like Ferdinando Gravina
Under the sign of his coat-of-arms,
A satyr holding up a mirror
To a woman with a horse’s head;
(Vicious jealousy as he spies on his young wife,
Every twist of her body and mind
He must possess,and deny to others,
Every glory of his own madness
He must force upon the world)
The stone monsters in the garden,
Leering, writhing, sneering, snarling,
And the house fitted with strange distorting mirrors
And furniture made of broken teapots,
And chairs with spikes hidden under the cushions.
In the ruins of Motya
I stand before the tophet
Where Phoenician women would sacrifice their firstborn
To the goddess Tanit;
In the museum stand hundreds
Of burial urns and funeral stelae
For the infant victims.
And here are the tiny ornamental braziers
Used by Phoenician ladies
To burn myrrh and spikenard.
The Torre di Federico II in Enna,
High among the mountain clouds,
Absolute centre of Sicily:
The Emperor built this octagon
To mark the hub of the Trinacria;
Ascend the spiral stairway
To the top,and grasp the entire isle
With the mind,believing in one
Geomantic design,submitting
All earth to the heavens.
Uncanny light of Strómboli,
Melancholy abandoned isle of weird musings:
Climb, climb the volcano ,
Red sparks flaring up from the firefountain
As the god rumbles below;
Your dreams’ smouldering magma
Will light up the night.
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