A WALK IN CALANDRELLI

A walk in Calandrelli park, branching allures: the gesturing statues, ornament or recipient or beckoning of bright past souls. The Roman copy industry’s propagations, Greek imitations, automata of hours, paling with the years. That’s a thin path leading past the hollyhocks to nowhere, and they’re stacked, white-lilac, on a spine-slight stem, bent with their weight, in an afternoon’s hot argent, words hang in this air, a heaviness caressing the leaves’ green decorum, arching away from its shape, a tragic hammock. Whose humming threnody apportions this decay? Bird, what vernacular are you hurling? From inside the eater comes the swarm, from the strong flies sweetness. Honey of the carcass, and we swallow, tongue and worm.