6.14.2008

Fontegaia, closing fast...

22


A quiet summer Saturday only the rolling surf
of tires (on Hope St.) making noise I mess
with the tesserae of my familiar mosaic
shifting the icon-tokens here, there (St. Olaf,


St. George) as if to make it all cohere
here to frame a dome out of pure foam &
filmy scurf this is a job for St. Jerome, &
not some gypsy fiddlehead or balladeer


In the evening taking out the garbage
among the cedars behind the old church
the green dusk-light a lichen-phosphorus
struck an opal match from a distant age


some reconcilement of remotest mind
he wrote & so I remembered how these
flaky photographs I try to fix are emblems
only of an inward lens (sometimes you find it,


opening) Mnemosyne mother of every memory
your almond ray be with me now while I recall
the whole consort dancing together flickering
against the wall out of penury Oblomov's


burning heart under the bridge arching its back
& shimmering as if to mimic that far-off Sky-
Ocean-River
(milky spine, rim of a panoply
of lights) whose furnace molds a cataract


in limestone vulcan flow where the rubber tire
swings motionless in an early stillness
quietude pleroma Diana's light sandal-
wing's whole world come round (suspended lyre)

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