Those three bees simply can’t unstick their feet from the Barberini
shield – or, as you would have rhymed it: in Rome I can’t bear to be reading
those eternal symbols, emblems, allegories, et al’s.
In eternal memory there are no tears, gaps, or holes.
He saddled the clouds that you and Lamarck see in your dreams,
that emperor who embodied himself in a thick-set arch –
Titus, who went forth to smite our forbears in Judaea.
These marble whims remind us of that legs-akimbo horseman.
Thus on a white steed of cloud the man of the hour rides into the Forum,
to have his picture taken with the tourists. But another emperor, with whom
you have more in common, circled by a dalmatian,
consoles us by saying that life has no conclusion.
I’m saying all this for no reason, to kill time, for form’s sake.
A dull little butterfly is doing something it shouldn’t,
not helping me write by landing on my notebook,
taking it for a huge camomile.
9 June 1997, Foro Romano