Poem 162: Corelli the Tourist Visits London

le gran tourissimo begins
on this English train of thought
gazing off owlishly through
these greater spotted windows
at the leaving trees
fastly disappearing
down this last darkly
grounded woodland avenue
of disbelief eloquently monologued
by this autumnalled landscape
of grey bowing the Italian knave
to a sepulchuraled church
inspired music entreating
for the light at the end of
this plain chanted tunnel of rain.

this light, this warm golden
baroque of applause bursting
upon the heads of wives
and heralds alike from this bright
and seemingly idolatrous son.
-Arcangeleo mio, Libera me-
tripping on the light fantastico
flowing over the Italian
marble, as breaking new ground,
ground the tiled stone into dust
as dust thou art to become water
dreaming that it is wine
dreaming that it is a woman
in black stockings
with a sunflower on her thigh
and she a rose, wantonly hipped,
silkily lipped and scarletly tipped
as she bowed over his gloved
hands and said (in Italian naturally)
” has the cat got your tongue ?”

her hair was washed by the light,
her eyes were the shuttered night
he remembered when principalities
crumbled, bread was broken,
and blood was tokened by the tides
that wash against these pores
when they had loved safely
and as simply as the sky
moving across their skin
uncovering fire.
-Arcangelo mio, Libera me-
and he the angel, hovering in sonata
form with the sun on his back.

this same afternoon sun
setting in London at 4pm,
shining from a doorway in Soho
that shelters a homeless Italian man
watching the light as it marbles
a fold in the businessman’s suit
that matches perfectly the fold
in Michelangelo’s Pieta in Rome,
golden from the same sunset
that sees him on the river
of cloud red, and floating
on the current of gold as a swan
deferential but with the sanctity
of blood in its eye.