L’amor che move il sole e le altre stelle

BLADE-POINT

You there – coiled on quiet side street

in Ravenna, your flickering

sabre-tooth tongue barely

echoing now – like that complete

grey gentleman, cornered by paint-cans

in Antonioni’s stony

Red Desert (who is he?)

mutely suffering blessed senseless

Giuliana’s windblown St. Vitus dance...

Maybe he beheld

her triple rainbow, welded

somehow over arctic heavens;

or this winter-silvered river, slowly

inexorably mirroring

its way to New Orleans.

An emblem of continuum (sea-

borne).  All things are moved by love;

thus you conclude your song,

rapt raptor, eagle-prong –

wisdom Minerva signaled Jove

among hard-bitten Romans.  Glancing

blow, ineffable blade-

point (that steely Maid

of Orleans would ratify) – slung

thread-thin from remotest eye

of polar bear (Mama

& Papa Bear... ah, now

I see!).  Heart-music.  Organ-sigh.

12.31.15 

*p.s. All things are moved by love is actually a more precise translation of a line from an untitled early poem by Osip Mandelstam, which begins "Insomnia. Homer...")