All night I dreamed of ornate fountains,
water sprayed in intricate designs
like liquid lace or the traceries of Gothic

On the Irish coast, a rutted road
traced a winding track along the wind-
scored face of a limestone bluff.

Coming into eighty
I slow my ship down
For a safe landing.

I dream
of magazine covers
and clothes from my seventeenth summer,

A long silk
is pulled quickly
over my upturned palms

oh of course I was often a second time
in rome—but at certain times I was also
actually there for the third or fifth time. when were

Set in the silence of pure perspective,
the ideal city has no people in it,
only buildings. On these streets Order rules

Not the turmoil, the togas, the color TVs in the Forum—
he gawked at them with the eyes of a bumpkin,
but he smiled at them too. The tree.

Rooting in brittle mortar—
gypsum plaster, sand, and water—
bougainvillea grew around the arches,

Remembering Nabokov

 A dark damp night and a sudden hatch
of moths has covered the glass of the