Turn eterne

(to C.)

To linger long upon this land
we must allow our wings to petrify,

I must allow a river to become my gullet,
name sunk among the barges, to recite:

We are still young as morning’s
washings on the bank.

Here they paint houses with the sun:
rust petal, blood-orange.

We must ascend the streets, become
fretted with arches, traversed by sky.

Let’s go out. To your travertine skull, apply
Egyptian eyebrows, Baroque skin.

Be quick as a canto or a photograph.
The city is eternal because you are not.

Tomorrow we can wake and wash
dark pavement in the bleaching hours.

Moss-crotched, patient, you can perch
above a bowl of holy water,

yielding your many breasts:
quarried from earth, alert as birds.

Can visit the chancel where you laid
your heart askew: a wound and altar.

Listen as the flower-seller’s tune
tilts into an anthem in the city’s lips:

We are still young as night,
a swift noise in an ancient blindness.