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SURFACES AND MASKS; 17, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In salute again


In Salute again.
This time, did not feel
burning from arrows shot
into neck, chest, stomach, thigh.
I bled though, but not much.
To fight pain I kept
in view the woman
across the room; she's from Orante.
Her passion is sad.
Distraction is good for pain.

Out to Torcello again.
Hard spring! Light
high and sharp, higher noon clear
with shadows deeper
than direct,
and beneath us -- hey! -- the Antichrist
on his throne
holding the c.c. on his lap.
Not exactly the way I
remember
it, the fire
and angels poking heads
you might have thought
good or at least worthy
of ascent,
down
into the volcano.
Out there there are levels:
skullbones (finished)
people waiting (to burn)
the half-burned
Lucifero in his inferno!
The woman from Assunta
at the other end, trapped
in mosaic, unable to move
even
if she wanted to
lift a finger --

The light in San Giorgio dei Greci
is not the best, yet
you reach up through it
to touch The Passion
in the Orthodox manner
with its seventeenth-century
red-gold yellow-gold, but
your fingers fumble instead
upon the eyelids
and across her nose, blindly
guessing appearance.
Faith in art restored,
you go next door
and into the arms
of the woman of Hodigitria.
As though you really were her child,
she makes you
look toward the camera,
tickles your belly,
tries to make you smile
but too many centuries
of suffering the sins
of the Judeo-Christian human heart
have turned your little head
and its quite odd face
to metal quickly painted brown.
Here in Ellenico
there is a stillness, tender
but not soft enough to soften
your hardness.
Your fingers, chubby and little,
play
with the stone-hard creases
in her dry-blood
red robe.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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