& so concludes Fontegaia.

27

 
So Frisbee sets off   into the stream again
rainwater overflow down   Arthur Street
little Tom Thumb fellow   in my mother's fleet
fable   what is he?   Not quite a man?

 
One of the Little People, I guess   adrift on the easy
rush of Irish gab, my fancy O   Farewell, my little
fancy-man, now!   O   goodby, goodby!   & he sails
off   across the soothing mutter of her breezy

 
dream (for entertaining anxious irritable boys)   So
this is where my own lips take the wind   grow
silver, inching   navigating choppy water   some cello
accompaniment for an aria   (keening Hero

 
on the Hellespont, maybe)   remembering
that golden eye   a look through the   still oil
framed on the wall   that held me   tremulous (all
out of time)   an almond from Byzantium   in a ring

 
of dancing fillies   (Sienese)   & the eye of memory
wells with a single tear   where streams begin   &
rivers flow   an eye behind the eye   from the bottom-
most well of clay   looks out   gently, steadily

 
the eye   curtained in the wings   like a hovering
Frisbee-disk   whose story is   Now and Providence
& you catch only   a glint of it   in the raven's
deep glance   there   in the black steppe   & the ring

 
of far-off iron, the   steadfast drone of its distant
harmonies   over the flood   of the horses' tumbling
hoofbeats   shouts of the riders   nearing their wedding   in
a meadow   quiet   vast   Oblomov pausing now   almost (silent)

                        
                                            6.21.08