The earth-dark octaves of her singing hair,
Sung-circles of campagna, the citadel,
And campanile bells in the Segestano air.
The pail sits like an expectant kiss on the lip of the well.

When young, to the sun
Confide ~ when old, to the sun
Despise ~ Then, the sun.

Death is such a thing
As dark cherries
Plucked to bobble from the basket heap,
And so then slighted from offhand,
Be the underling to the massy arbor sweep,
Be the stilled ponderance of solitudes.

The desert is a hummingbird
With wings of hovering heat.
Weightless idler,
Forever in love with the acanthus leaf
And the nectar of the far Aegean.

Her hand is a bookmark in my heart,
So many smoothed pages ago.

Give to sorrow, watchfulness.
Give to happiness, no eyes, but its blind externals.
Give to me, the blind thoughts that can see through humankind.

The light from the end of eternity
Comes in through the window glass
Sits on the sill with the red Anthurium
In the stenciled orange Waterford vase
Centuries.down.and.Decades.done.
From the grassy light of the Lyceum.

If the sun were to choose where to die,
It would falter over Pompeii,
And lie like a broken godhead
Or lava poured into the pottery cups of
The open-skied houses.