Undressed trees, silent reproach
of the cypresses: how many of those gone
seeking your shade, inside rain and the
sharp, brittle noise of gulls.
Scrap-remnants they scrape up
from the surface of earth.
Poets princesses old aristocracy new nobility
of musicians and magicians of light –
your places of rest hallowed there by
ordinariness
the pall of days and business-cards left under stones,
cell-phone numbers scrawled by Midwestern academics, an
entrepreneur from the Heights of Beverly Hills:
so Stravinsky will be able to call them there,
and confirm a commission from the other side of things:
more life than this one can summon from
skewed time-tables, tourism, the certain optics
of cable-TV.
Those who breathed-in the residue of stars:
sleep now in the balance
fingers in the salt of light
toes dipped in the lava of the belly beneath you:
what bridges – invisible, faithful – you throw out, still,
from your marzipan island
of sweet, solitary, stone.
Venice, April 2004
whispered lineage 