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PLAY-TIME
Lavinia leans on her dwarf,
her towel slapping
his dark hump, leans but is
jaunty enough—haunch
and ankle and damp-curly nape—
and she so pale and tall
on those chunky sandals.
Sophonisba drowses
against the tile steps, the steamy
water lifting her tits.
Thisbe, horizontal, slides
through the oily ripples, her
tight head, her rosy
buttocks rising, falling,
pearly under the smoky
glimmer of the lamps that swing
from the dripping vault.
When the roof gave, they
raked up the mosaic
and sold it by the kilo sack.
My mouth acid with coffee,
I watch you pattern the tabletop
with two-thousand-year-old
tesseræ. The traffic
chatters like a brief cadenza
of trumpets and kettledrums.
The camerieri, too, look at you
with lecherous eyes.
The cliffs of cloud build
over Kansas. Westward,
where we came from, the light
still flecks the ocean
of counties; the silos flatten
and darken and shrink,
as the Rockies raise their
damaged heads and surge east
five-hundred miles. What do you
know of time? With the first
fireflies, the sky
opens its livid folds.
Listen, you say. It's
going to rain. I saw lightning.
Yes. And I saw Beethoven,
hunched in his velvet loge,
looking at the silent applause
   
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