today's Fontegaia.

17

 
Palio-town spins like a gyroscope,
driven by heaving horses, meager men
against the gravity of time.  Now
is then.  Eden in a shady envelope,

 
or den of thieves.  A word on the lips
of a blind old oracle, pithy, mythy -
like the ragged shrouds or shifty
rags of earth's first refugees.  Lips

 
Monastery?  Vagabonds from Ararat,
maybe.  Shards of a hoary quarrel's
quibble over terms.  Through a needle's
eye - who's first?  Not this, not that...

 
And the race is not to the swift
whispers the epileptic hierophant
begging by the Golden Gate (can't
get there from here).  Lift?

 
Lift yourself.  She sees the wheels
a-wheeling over sodden Voronezh
like ravens - voron-voron-neverish...
and whispers around them (feels

 
her way).  Or flickery knives,
or tongues of silver-serpentine,
a rusty green gone phosphorescent -
like a river underneath the sky, or

 
beehives on the prairie.  Between
the start and finish line (or Man
and Word) they hover there - thin
fleet of arcs - a goldfinch sun.