Climbed with unholy purpose
holy stairs, by a cypress
the simple blasphemy. Grape-
green moonlight on a wine-
red damask bedspread. The
nightingale song: movement
and stasis, that way of
life is a way of death. A
string shopping bag, cab-
bages, sausages, savour
of day-to-day swelling
Jacopo’s bronze doors at
Bologna: creation and fall.
Unmorticed loosely fitted
stones, straw and candles,
on the Rome road. A cute
church! Refinement of deso-
lation, pink and sulphur
teatime fog on stone, on
a Bailey bridge splintering
beneath jeeps, bikes, carts,
feet. A beggar knelt at an
approach, blew on a grass
blade, “Lili Marlene.”