109.
There’s a taboo against learning
history
tabu, to know yestreen spoils your
afternoon
everything forgets, pleasure is always
now
back then is all the pain and dark
and work and wolf
sunbathers wait for their Renoir, the
wind
drives them indoors, Lincoln dies in
fever
Romulus Augustulus leaves Rome to die
in peace
this is the empire — the sea’s been
telling us that forever
forever, no god and no czar, no
meaning,
no bible, nobody home, sleep in sun
on grass
I forget more than you’ll ever
remember
that’s why in sleep I am the same as
you.
110.
Ask the sea put on a coat and tie
wear a battered panama
we come close to the pylon where
chariots turn
fling into the home stretch at last
fat chance to be Rome without the
Romans
live in marble grandly with a purple
mind
the Jews taught us angels and never
forget
the root of ‘angel’ is the root of
‘king’
an angel is a message on its way
somewhere
no angel turns away unheard
but no one knows what language they
hear in
or if all our jabber is their arcane
philosophy.
