Classic Poem

I knocked with my hard heel
on their hard roof
but got no answer—black
panic, nor red reproof.
I could almost feel,

like Roland at his Dark
Tower, the knock go down
through vaults and galleries
where all had turned to stone;
and where a distant arch-

eological tap-tap
would no more be heard
than in Herculaneum
the hammers of Charles Third
upon ages of pumiced sleep.

What trumpet will sound when
that brittle, basalt-hewn
queen and her catafalques—
sure as the crack of June—
melt into mortals again?











By permission of the author.