for Ted Blodgett

There are places the spirit in transit
is allowed to pause, the escort loosing
his winged sandals, permitting time out,
a smoke, a bite, this glass of warm wine

under the ragged arbor, this landlocked
sea north of L'Estaque, its oily water
darkly burnished by the high blue wind.

I am defining this shorescape, placing
the angle of an ochre wall here. A slant
of pale carmine rooftiles here. And here
dark rock, dark shadow of pine framing

that papery water. And on the far shore,
where petroleum towers flame, is waiting
Florimell impassive as a salt-white stone.

These days, mon vieux , I write of children.
Of children damaged by the world and by
my clumsy words. As always, too, I write
of rooms and furniture as if some small

walled town, houses growing like crystal
inside a roman circus, were mine by right,
mine to bequeath to all my sons and daughters.

By the interplay of air and water amazed,
I have stood with you on clifftops, daily,
while among the trees (the hot smell of earth,
the abrading cicadas) funerary statues gathered.

We two are clay between their senseless hands:
always you knew me for a necromancer, hunting
the saintly girls who haunt the house of bone.