IV. Roman Venue

Tonight I believe the architecture Of the moon requires no argument; it exists As a melody exists, overheard by a man out walking

At dawn, a man who can imagine its notes scored Across the sky, who knows the songs Escaping the latticed windows above him are like

Delicate ladders ascending to a perfect room, no, A sequence of rooms, each more perfect Than the one before . . . each more luminous & whole,

Like the arc of a melody framing the horizon of the night, Where a last frail note hangs, ripe as a vowel-utterly Calm, utterly white-& as that man climbs into

This empty portico of the suspended moment He hears nothing but those long, struck chords of Silence, & the round door dilates, sexual as the waking mind.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Mar/Apr 1998
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