Capri Elegy


This is an elegy to be sung

In our grotto’s quiet

In the first hours of morning

Before sun up,

When magical blue light

Rising up from the sand

Forty fathoms below

Seduces nudibranchs to dance,

To sing the old histories of Emperor Tiberius

Caligula, Barbarossa,

And of our own lost loves; for there can be

No veligers without love,

Without hermaphroditic unity of thought,

Without having sung our

Ancient choruses across three extinctions

For the return of former beauties

Pleading again to be left in peace.