After the procession, the trumpetsAnd the drums, the gilded chariots,The trophies, the ships’ beaks of bronze,The swags of roses, the snow-tunicked slaves,The maidens, each brow wreathed with leaves,The magnificent, incomparable processionThat is the splendour and order of the city,After it all, after the dream,The exquisite and too brilliant dream,With the plaster images of the gods,The […]
There are so many, and each oneIts own. But why this, and this still?Was there a sign? Perhaps justThe ancient, utter silence, a hawkHanging upon emptiness aloneBetween the cyclopean cliffs.Leaving the quay, the rusty steamer,The narrow, huddled, whitewashed street,We scrambled upward to the sky.Upon the crest a monasteryHewn from salt, and in the hills beyondA […]
Handscroll
Twin postcards
What cld you potentially – no! – possibly do to mean – O – wait! this feels too facile. So try once again. Make sure it is all sure – steadfast – scalar movements towards god knows what. You request the sun is shut out so you can muse on song. O – but of […]
They did not know they stood by Leukas’ rocks
/ (Where Sappho’s story hurls her from above)
/ While waiting for the transports to…
A man wi’ a great big beard
/ A met;
/ Said: ‘Don’t be feared
/ If ye get wet.
/
/ Run twenty years
/ On nature’s…
A paper lantern on a balcony
/ in one of those old Edo evenings you
/ have read about, perhaps. Kabuki, tea
/ and blossom, wavering:…
The first to die was PROTESILAUS / A focused man who hurried to darkness / With forty black ships leaving…
For Lois Pereiro
/
/ In Ithaca everyone was dead.
/ They say it was me, Argos the dog, who woke first:
/ — Dead, dead, dead!
/ A smell…
Public libraries / were cherished like Pallas Athene’s temples, / which, for us, in effect, they were.
after Nonnus
/
/ I
/
/ Her only home was here in this forest, among the high rocks,
/ sending her long arrows in flight through…
