curl up like black paper
burning like a moth,
a glove turned inside out;

trapped too under a house,
a circle hidden and musty;
fragile under steps,

let us escape the carrying,
legions of white coats,
corridors as long as life.

each borderline mirror,
broken fragments,
an open eye,

each missed edge,
every cut of missed intent
calls for hands of glass

sharp for loss, for splinters,,
broken pictures and edges that
form a skin of red hills

that shapes and bleeds, and
cries a trail of doors and loss;
and all of this and less

tells a story

seen through like a map
                        of the underground,
                        a perfect web of blue and red

we are easily observed,
                        heads filled with empty plains
                        or bellies of pig lust

so let me, at least, serve you
                       as a bottle of milk warming on
                       a doorstep as pigeons wake

or as a bomb-site mirror
                       forgotten and brick eyed with dust,
                       breezed by a newspaper in flight;

unnoticed, I fail to reflect the truth,
                       a stranger passing a glass door,
                       myself alone, a face of age.

the night is the black down of a yearling
this sky a taunt of trailed stars
Let me spin in a frosty lane,
                     head back,
                     too fast to count
and throw the dark to ground

Capri

roofless cubes, spidery with wire,
cakes of azure and enzian;
above at the Villa San Michele
Rilke smiles down at the broken beaches,
coves of defiant waves, compacted sea

Pompeii

a chessboard of honest stones
open to a sky of hushed shouts;
we huddle in a ***** frame
of another life, a stopped day

Napoli

warm and secret, olive-eyed
you make a new face
as we gaze from a bus:
an act of moment

a small girl serious cycles
determined down a lane,
two crows flood over
a dark meadow, slight, fast,
and a cold rock filled
with gassers and haters
rolls round the sun;
good reasons to deny
this iced and distant ball.

Four of stained glass and stars
all leftglance beyond ratio or air,
thin as tissue but strong

as a pastel visa; fated curves
guide your hand,voices drag you
into mud and steal the day.