25

 
We abide beside you, swept the mournful pines;
we abide.  Shade of a modest mother's
radiant moss, lichen (forest floor).
A steadfast, windswept point.  Shine, shine.

 
A pair of humble shoulders, sloping, strong
lift from an upright spine of sweet
mercurial water-spray.  Pivot 
of a leaky dome - a swivel-spire among

 
the vineyard hills.  Whose shadow
hefts a globe at last?  Antea's lambkin?
Atlas, Sinai, onyx, obsidian?  Slight kingpin-
hobo, fallen into milk... just presque vue.

 
Wheels within wheels gird the mappamundo
in the tower.  The Campo's curvature
capitulates a horserace calendar.
Her walls reiterate the green hills' O

 
and disappear into the teeming earth,
its tender dream, its true beginning
(sprung from tight-wound ring).  An
India in you, dear - see her shine forth.

 
And who is the painful knower there
(inept) in frigid billows, bald gray sea?
Whose hand impressed a sailor's sympathy
(radius of descending bathysphere)

 
upon a cavernous echo-design
of hollow vault, inconsolable pine?  
I know the name.  Where wells begin.
Where moss grows over runes; jasmine.