Classic Poem

1.

I dreamed last night
that I was married
I was scared, the woman
being very young
with green
stones in her garter.

She looked upon me wistfully
and said:
" I was a taxi dancer
with a sweetheart on a fishing smack.
I perceive by these pains
that I am condemned to die. "

From Okeanos sprang
her hot breath.
Her image is an ancient blue glass,
so subtle,
it reminded me
of one I had not seduced
She was brushing out her hair
before the mirror.

I should have been arranging
the white poppies in the window
with the coriander.

2

We climbed the stairs,
the white dress flowing
from the lady's sides.

She turned the pottery lamp.
How shall I wear you,

center crown stone,
great blue solitaire of sentiment?
They will say I am Jewish.

She took my hand and pointed out
the men's shops with terrazzo floors,
the city desks, the shoe windows,
the Carleton waiters with a canape
of coral lobster, 666 for colds
and fevers, the suburban shore drive,
the old man hammering in the doll shop.

So light the room like air
about a willow branch.
A glass stands on the golden table
Prints of St. Marks, The Bargello,
Mme. LeBrun and Her Daughters.
A glass vase with a spinning stem.

" This is my daughter Sue. "

She sat adamic as with jug
and towel for a painter.

A young girl's study: lace
and nimbus from the east.

She played a classical piano-forte,
clef-wandering sweet pinna tremolo,
a Chippendale in a dominoes etude:
the bird pirriko, pirriko prrrk
ia ia
the leghorn rustling in the brush ,
the creek between the rockshelves ,
Nancy with a bunch of wet grapes .

You were travelling through Delos
when the end came.

On the esplanade at Cannes
the awnings suddenly
went black before me.
I was carried to the belvedere
of Villa Policastro.

In the evening
in the sight of blood and bandages
I lay there like a dressed fowl.

On a marble seat
above the Ligurian
another evening.
An ideal
like a canary
singing in the dark
for appleseed and barley.

Something also from the laurel,
a tiny arsis.