Sunset whispers to itself
~No time outlives time~
The meltemi winds crackle the wild millet,
Graze-feed upon the stalks of Greek plains,
The pelican scoops up the honeyed Aegean,
Waves of sunlit anise and almond in refrain,
Vestigial as the sweet persimmon from Egypt,
The hammered warmth from the flat anvil of Africa,
Sunset whispers to itself
~No time outlives time~

They said passing by me that they would put out their eyes,
The clouds did as they died across the battlefield,
As the gauzy horses stanched the wept blood,
As the thorns, gnats, and briers, wound into
A dove’s nest of bayonets and knives,
The clouds died in insurrection,
And the night breathed freely and the stars cleared the mud.

Love is not a maturation of voices to the more sublime,
But sotto voce, an undertow of groping intonations,
The sod of soil hearts cast across the reaping sea.

The horse breathes in the city, the world of unrelenting pistons
And steam from the jingling harness, and the jangling windows
That reflect the bolting sparrows like fire arrows in the coming night,
Viennese darkness is like the smell of the chocolatier mixed with snow,
Sealed in a sachertorte with the alley-crack of the riding whip on coach,
Viennese sunshine is like the baker’s soul, rising on flashing coppers and tins.

Love not the empress curve of your cheek,
The many-storied, empty ziggurat of belief,
The man-handled, baked brick built so high,
Your grotty thighs are pasted with all your lovers,
Your lacquered heart is glazed by luminous grief,
Head-bearer of broken vases as your crown,
Filled with dry dust from liquid stars.

Snow brings to earth the ash footsteps of Titans,
Winter in its giant vacancy of bygone strides,
The overthrown birth of frost mother and sky,
~The snow proselytizes all our warm tomorrows~
But the totality of loss lies like a starved lion,
Paws crossed, staring at the cold changeling-world,
As a young white-tailed Springbok ages into distance.

These clouds of Italy are grown on vines,
Infidels of skies, fruit bearers of wine-veined
Marble, fertile in spite of its own lifeless tableau,
Here thrives the succulent garden of the alone,
Where turns aside the burnt nape of the plowman,
Voyager of the cool midnight seas of the mind,
Up to this arable vine of sighs from outworn gods,
And hears his heart once more give up its throne.