That so priceless patience gone
Into these fragments of fret
Intact where the gay figure

 On the mantle a bowl of sand from the Sahara,
a lover’s gift, and as such the map cowers
beneath the bed. So this is the continent

“Where is he—you know, the . . . one?”
my ninety-year-old friend asked
and I knew that she meant her son—

Swifts do not sing: 
what they do well 
is sleep on the wing,

Trees in this landscape 
signal the presence of a river. 
A side road leads us on— 

          We often elude the scimitars
of the Zouaves among the furniture
                by being geese.

And does the wolf still pace the shore.
Still pace, still pace, still pace, still pace.
The shore how still.

I shall have Beauty underground.
Poppæa was once in my tumbrel, you see.
So were blithe Helen and white Iope

A choreographed wanting
from thin, soured soil, this perfect
endurance: the grapes

I let it go. Waves throw back
                white bodies and ivy twines
         in hollow trunks on slopes