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Leavetaking

In search of pasture, a place to lie down in.
Back to the mother breast
or a dream of return
to the land of the fathers, a land my father
never mentioned, although he could pearl it out
in his impeccable German: Vaterland.

Fatherland, mothertongue.
I live, speak
elsewhere. This island.

St. Cloud, Paris

Strange name for a man of God. Stranger
this clipped, glazed landscape
which emerged from his modest
retreat: a man
who wished only to be
left alone—and was made
a saint for it, and brought back
into the fold. He kept vigil

here. Strange yet woefully apt then
this falling dream of water,
silver plunge and misted bursts,
swoon over swoon
tumbling
ecstatic, endless . . .
as slippery as
the apparition of multiplying selves
caught in the mirror-lined rooms where
I obliged the King’s morning toilette:
Clementi and Bach spilling
like perfume over the tossed silks,
valets tugging, murmuring over
his grunts as I kept fiddling,
tumbling smaller
and further
away . . .
if a saint couldn’t do it,
how could I?

Strangest of all, to imagine
the tattoo of boots crossing the parquet,
bayonet-flash clattering in the constant gleam
of the gilt tabouret, the stands of agate and polished marquetry.
That among these glittering bijoux
Republics were proclaimed,
and emperors . . .
where now a park lies,
open to the ordinary citizen:
green terraces
for the parched wayfarer.

en route

Air, breathe me in. Take this thick
heartache, this wily, gelatinous yearning
and make me everywhere
a nothingness.
I will be

without boundaries, then;
an infestation of humours, invisible companion:
ageless, like a child.

No one will be able to avoid me.

Rome

I don’t know the name of the tree
which dandles here, nor of these blossoms’
impossible exuberance, how delicate how bold.

I should know these things.
I should walk more, sit in the sun.

Everyone here seems drunk from kissing.
Noon’s high light.