Anne Rouse

We’d left the cameras in the Hertz But made St P.’s for the tourist Passion. I knew one of the trio: permapressed, a little weary This is what he did on his vacations. A few bearded heads bled from the corbels. We walked by the pleated steps of a temple In whose maw someone was being tried with flame.

We took in the long galleria before lunch. Sloan made some remark about art...

We’ve floored it from London. The bridge winches up; the moat bares To green algae silk, kitchen relics, The bones of suicides.

The snow, fine as bride’s Fine lace, stacks up its trousseau: A terrain in bedsheets, smoothed from memory. The town’s dead as midnight.

Rushing the houses of the estate, The wind skims the roof Like a bruising hand. From now, a...