Intermittent drizzle on the orange roofs;
a barge slides russeting water, I awoke
and heard brass music from another century:
carriage tinkles and princes and parasols
the white of souls promenading by the river;
no tankers, no allies, just rows of lindens,
“without the broken crucifixes of swastikas,”
and a cortège of starred-arm people, clasped-hands,
shuffling to the prick of spires, by rote,
a voice terse script silting the sky.
A breeze then shatters the rain’s paralysis,
sheets away the corpse barge, lifts mist clear
off the roofs, blanches the sun’s fight to copper
the river to my love’s rye-colored skin
when she surrenders to summer in a hammock’s
sweep on the porch, and I watch over her shifts,
between the inferno and paradise, and hear
my reflection murmuring: my God, my heaven,
my all, and hear the leaves gnashing
where the trees are glinting shades forgetting
their journey to this place of morning.
from Connotation Press