* * *

(* * *)

Where the air itself is ‘pink-tinged from the pantiles’,

and lions have wings; while birds don’t care to fly,

instead displaying on the cobbled piazzas

like the Japanese and German tourist tide;

where cats can swim and walls can shed a teardrop;

where the sun takes time to limn itself in gold

in the morning, sends a ray to dip an elbow

and check the temperature of the lagoon –

that’s where you fetched up, stayed, assimilated,

took a deep drag in armchair café lounge,

relaxed, grew still, then turned into a double,

wafted away like a wisp of smoke, and now

just try to guess, when you are omnipresent:

sometimes you make the teaset of a church

ring out, or else you zephyr through a garden –

the non-returner, man in mackintosh,

the GULag escapee who found an exit

through to behind the mirror; then, effaced,

you left us at the crosspoint of the mapmarks,

leaving upon the water not a trace –

you might go by as fragile little tugboat,

nacre of cloud above a dull canal,

coffee aroma on a Sunday morning,

to rise again next day, for good and all.

9 May 1996, Eugene