Poems

You were the flame of a Pompeian lamp, Wavering in the sea-wind, Cosima, And ever to the gale of me you danced, Flickering out of reach.... I will return to Sorrento, To the wine-room under the cliff.

Here by the church door A shriveled bat Has folded his wings And dreams of dead crepuscular delights, Bat loves, bat orgies, Tarantistic flittings through the dark. O fragrant beggar blinking in the sun, I will drop three soldi in your hat.

O keen of scent, You who have found me in my slough, Not your beak, but your green eyes Have torn to the center of me. Ah, but I shall not slake them with a tremor.

In the asylum at Termaggio Reside a dozen poets— So many colored balloons bobbing against a black ceiling; Will none of them be caught By the arm of a strong wind, Down and outward through the open window? We cannot remove the roof at Termaggio, In the sun our balloons would burst.... Perhaps we had better close the window.

Under the cypresses No nightingales will sing this spring; For I have strewn the ground With the shards of broken illusions, And I will build of them a citadel of austerity With towers whence I can search the sky For a rainbow that is stronger than painted china. Dear nightingales, There are still the saccharine gardens of Verona, Where the moon-moth waves his fragile wings.