Sleepwalking in Venice
Watching a boneless nymph’s
half-hearted resurrection
from a spout in the pavement
Watching a boneless nymph’s
half-hearted resurrection
from a spout in the pavement
We were between armor and mummies
on the ground floor,
weighing preservation in a tin
Barrel bombs. Chlorine gas. Tomahawks.
The crowd balks
at the little lute sleeping through the news.
Roadside grasses are seen
to vary, stem and thistledown:
pale straw or light brown,
Whoso list to hunt it with a camera?
The Carolina parrot is extinct.
Hunted to nothing emerald.
On leftovers ana breakfast like the spleenish wulf the wéstenas chase.
He sets out hungry, nose in the wind, up the wulfhleoþu.
After a luckless trek, he gilleþ; and gaunt companions answer
If you’d seen
lightning nets in clear water,
midnight blue beyond the reefs;