1.
The track at the velodrome is banked
like the rings of Saturn spinning
with riders who blur away
like those fast-motion films
of flowers blossoming and dying
or of the moon in a roiled sky
sailing through its phases
Tonight the moon rises above rooftops and bridges
spreading its sea of silver light
stilling vast crowds
and for an instant reflected whole
in the spectacles of a blind man
sitting alone in a parked car
2.
In the yard of the children’s prison
the fruit on the solitary tree is blue
shriveled beyond recognition
At the turn of the last century
the inmates (aged 7 to 13)
pickpockets petty thieves and vandals
ate gruel from tin bowls and slept on iron cots
gazing down from their cells
at the tree when it blossomed in April
and in September bore fruit
which the guards pocketed rocking
on their heels into the long afternoons
It was an apple tree
3.
At dusk rain slants in from the north
black needles clotting
the locomotive’s cyclops beam
the prison searchlight
the streetlamp’s cone
beneath which vagrants line their boots
with road maps before closing their eyes
and entering a maze of blind alleys
searching for the one doorway among thousands
that will lead away from their nightmares
and the one in a million
(where the rain dissolves into light)
that opens onto paradise
4.
Tattooed on my shoulder
a fish with golden scales
silver fins and a ruby eye
a creature last seen
three millennia ago
near the Nile delta
reputed to have entrails of pearls
coveted by the fishermen
who lined the riverbank
and waded into the reeds
shoulder to shoulder netting the fish
and gutting it for treasure not flesh
until it was rendered extinct
5.
In the Egyptian Department at the Louvre I wonder:
if the priests of the XIIth Dynasty were correct
and our dreams are memories of past lives
shattered and rearranged by the gods
if the truth is camouflaged
in the token correspondences of this world
names dates places that can be linked with ease
by even a minor deity
then the inscrutable mysteries which have tormented
me and my tormentors ought to come clear
so simple suddenly:
Happiness awaits all of us
but few find their way to her
6.
The owl no bigger than my fist
speckled blue and black
is hooting in the courtyard at dawn
when I open a letter from a friend
grieving for his daughter
quoting Martial who mourned the death
of another child two centuries ago
Earth, lie not heavy on her who walked so lightly on you
Sometimes it’s not hours but years that pass in a single day
and when darkness falls again
drawing me into its circle
will I hear that same owl
or will another be perched in its place?
7.
The music that breaks into my sleep
like the wind whirring
across the Venetian lagoon
the night I crossed
the long wooden bridge
that connects Burano and Mazzorbo
identical to the bridge a psychic
drew for me in a nightclub in Prague
spanning (she said) the twin shores
of birth and death
their reefs invisible to all men
their deep currents liable to divert me
for an eternity
8.
So the dead are among us again
even here where Halloween is not celebrated
and the moon flies through the skeletons of trees
and men in rowboats fish for souls on the river
A woman with spidery hair swings a lantern
and disappears down the colonnade
past a row of buildings tilted like gravestones
in which a single window is lit
and a wall from whose depths shadows emerge
assuming the contours of bodies they will follow
all night and abandon at dawn:
a revelation to me
that each day we take on a new shadow
9.
A friend of a friend chops and sautées
morel mushrooms leeks and celery root
punctuating the narrative of her life’s journey
with Sufi epigrams such as
The candle is not there to illuminate itself
Deft with a knife and light on her feet
she decants a Sauterne and declares
that she only cooks for strangers
food unlike love tenderness or true passion
so easy to give so readily received
For most men she says the more elaborate
the meal the greater the illusion of fulfillment whereas
If you are entertaining a dervish, dry bread is enough
10.
In the triangular park with the sundial
the war veteran sells his medals
a beggar plays her accordion
for the poodle dancing on its hind legs
and children line up to buy ices
persimmon apricot grenadine
from an old woman with a parrot on her shoulder
that asks the children their names
until the woman closes up her cart
and walks home rewarding the parrot
with grapes as he repeats the names
in the order he learned them
Therése Barthélemy Clarisse Victor Marie…
11.
The snake charmer’s daughter
born in a carnival tent
with a crescent of stars on her brow
calls herself the Serpent Priestess
and opens a studio next door
Behind a velvet curtain her assistant
plays his flute while she shuffles tarot cards
explaining that this street was named
not for its sinuous path but for the snakes
Napoleon’s soldiers brought back from Egypt
which infest the neighborhood
though I have only seen one:
the cobra coiled in a basket at her feet
12.
I dip my rotting oars
into the brown waters of the lake
and row toward the floating temple
Splinters of light escape its shuttered windows
a red lantern sways on the dock
a candle flutters by the door
I can hear the faintest sound:
fruit falling in the orchard
a snake shedding its skin in the reeds
My breathing is shallow
my hands one with the darkness
and when finally I reach the temple
my oars are gone
13.
I cross the hall with a parched throat
passing a mirror that remains blank
a birdcage with an open door
and an orrery of the solar system —
the planets and their moons
orbiting a wooden sun
The water I drink is so cold
it could have been drawn from the iceberg
the size of Delaware
that recently broke away from Antarctica —
your destination perhaps
a small voice whispers
the next time you get out of bed
14.
This is a street of widows I say
my cheeks flushed with fever
poinsettias blazing in windows
and red leaves skittering
past the house on the corner
where the Mexican painter shot himself
his grave shadowed by a steeple
in which cardinals nest
while across from the cemetery a vendor
in a scarlet apron
hands me a bag of cold cherries
shaking his head observing
No not widows this is the street of snakes
15.
An ancient messenger in a modern uniform
bicycles down the street
with a dead letter to deliver
The lines in his palm are twisted into a noose
the coins in his pocket
embossed with the visages
of corrupt kings and queens
descendants of Justinian
codifier of laws he himself broke
and Theodora his empress
who allowed panthers to roam her bedroom
and slept with teams of wrestlers
only to have them beheaded at dawn
16.
In this room where a single ray of light
penetrates the vine-covered window
the green curtain that parts
onto the circular garden
I dip my hands into a basin of water
and they blur away
only the lines from my upturned palms remain
floating for an instant
realigning themselves
then disappearing
a map to guide me for the rest of my life
or until I leave this address
whichever comes first
17.
Returning to the cool galleries
of the museum as sunlight pours
through the windows I admire
the bronze statue of Queen Karomana
the ivory-handled knife of Gebelel-Arak
and the stela of King Djet (the Serpent King)
Then I take a train from the Gare de Lyon
to Pontoise where fishermen in black capes
net eels in the swollen river
and during the return trip dream of jackals
shrouded in mist circling the Valley of the Kings
their howls across thousands of miles
waking me in a sweat
18.
A city in Central Asia
a square walled in by granite buildings
bits of paper rising twenty stories on the wind
the two walkways that form an X
choked with weeds
at its center a cement Buddha
with a forehead cracked by the cold
From a rooftop a woman in green
calls repeatedly to a child
whose name I would like
to tell her is scrawled
in crayon beneath a face —
closed eyes and a downturned mouth —
on a door I’m about to open
19.
Electric-green palms
tom-toms in the mountains
birds iridescent as the clouds at dawn:
I was on a crescent beach
beneath a vast sky
at some juncture in another life
trying to find my way
until I realized
I must not move for once —
not when rain pelted my skin
or bees stung
not when the ghost of a butterfly brushed my arm
That was all I needed to know
20.
You need not read the Annals of Tacitus
or his contemporary Sima Qian in Yunan
to know we will never refrain
from doing unto others
before they can do unto us
and therefore have invented gods
to bestow their blessings
and incite conflagrations
that must destroy us all
earthly agents and true believers praying
despite centuries of unanswered prayers
that we might still salvage
a measure of grace and mercy
and lifting our blindfolds step from the darkness
21.
On the street upturned for an instant
the face of a Siamese princess
a Mayan dancer cross-legged on a bench
Phoenician twins playing flutes beneath a cypress
the populations of lost places still among us
until at nightfall they dissolve in the mist
or assume the forms of animals
to be glimpsed sidelong
a tail a wing a transparent eyelid
just as strangers attempt from passing
impressions to imagine us whole
placing us outside of time:
as immortal as we’ll ever get