This concludes what seems to be the 1st chapter of ongoing poem (Fontegaia).

28

 
A fine spring rain.  Settles like silver
mist upon the street-lit pavement.
Your native town, beyond argument -
actual as the gravestones by the river.

 
But you're not here.  And it was you
(like Ariadne, like a brown recluse)
played out the luminous painter-clue
that riddled me into this trobar clus.

 
Which one of us is missing, then?
Where mast meets shallop
at the center of cerebral hilltop
lamps of the frescos shine, shine -

 
the way your lashes flicker (here
and gone) across my absent-minded
minaret-dome.  So branches bend
inward... homely signs cohere

 
only for the vagabond.  Scripture
tags like a faithful Fido after vision
and the dogma of the politician
barks at its own reflection (pure

 
and blind) as hobo-capitan sets off again
toward the burgeoning rose in his sea-
chest (buried somewhere in deserted
San Francisco).  Toward your return.