Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.vii

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

Envoi

From the centurion gate, sharp shadows

fall among wild flowers, a mountain of cut stone

sunk in grass since Diocletian’s time.

A preference for the Virgin cult

teased the blood lust from these façades,

the bishopric from bacchanal.

Our sins are set, in monument bronze, or baroque

in gilt relief. At the graves of the great

we arrive for absolution, for abeyance

of fire in this attendance.

On the steps, a beggar bares ankle sores,

calling misery to its coin.

Rome, wolf-suckler – from this tended flame, empire,

the river rising

through tombs and fighting-pits –

in this place, the guilty dead burn and burn.

I step by the queues to the basilica, its colours

and sufferings and deeds of light.

I am released from history, turning back

with other ghosts, through the orchard

and the shadow gate, along the path of worn stone

to the temple of the poisoners.