Afterimages
I’ve been dreaming again, in English.
I acted in the Carnival Theatre in St. Petersburg,
indicating in this direction the sea,
and anchored near the shore,
end fastened to pegs or roots on the bank
the boat,
Christ gazing at the assembly
whose laughter was repressed by his cool replies.
Waking, I found
nothing had happened, nothing’s likely to happen.
I thought I had already answered the question,
a stupid one, I admit, but it does in Rome,
this high summer sweat of dead emperors
bubbling up through the stones.
You might as well attack the bronze statues,
the portrait busts in the Palazzo Nuovo,
the grass and flowers
and rumour of older voices, and I confess
it's true, I recognise my own
first among these others, its insistence.
I pass my captivity writing verses, unchallenged
through falls of fluted marble, the sprigs of Julian sunlight
just so.
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