The Whisper Networks

The hotel showers were splendidly profligate.

The aqueduct that fed the big

fountains down the street probably ran underneath

my bed, giving the water pressure

a nice bump. These were veritable circuses of water:

crowds pleased to see, qua

the wonders of  Roman hydraulic engineering,

water shatter its own mirror

never incurring bad luck. That weird accord

of rationality with credulity back

of everything; a double consciousness, sticky,

with surfacing its principle aesthetic.

It was the fountains that helped me remember

a spinto’s stratagem

of  holding her breath for at least four minutes,

training herself to dive in,

then, if not divadom. Naiads must be, conversely,

vocal masters.

What do they sing? They sing odes to the Pantheon,

whose niches stand empty

of the gods that a ray of sun through the oculus

goes on splashing with awful

clarity on its rounds of the heavens; the architect,

Hadrian, was the passionate

emperor. Another temple of  his, nicked of its storied

goddesses roma and amor,

put to work the magical properties of palindromes

for the good of the state. A pet falcon

sacrificed so that its earthly years might be annexed

to the emperor’s was a Five-Year Plan;

never forget the desk blotter in the administrative

office was blood red. I conflate

it with the rosebushes at the House of the Vestals.

Twice I saw a bride dressed

up, toddling in the street, posing for photographs,

and if they turn up in Vogue,

I won’t be the wiser. On close inspection,

those holes that fleck

the ancient masonry weren’t made by bullets,

but hooks that secured marble.

Monumental doors testify to the height of the heroes

that walk the earth then disappear.

Now what are the odds that the moon in a pellucid

cerulean dusk shakes loose

as a disc of marble spolia? It’s all a psychic recyclable

that seems endlessly up for grabs.

The Romans exit doors sideways, like cats flattening

themselves on a ledge, then

venture boldly into traffic. If a sudden access of quiet

obtains, it’s in a square of colossi

where executions took place. The windswept expanse

is both style and semantics.

So, up glaring stairs, in a killing sun, I hazarded

my life for a snatched reward

at the door handle with brass asps intertwined,

under ceilings some painter

wanted to strike us all blind with. (“Con forza!”)

On the outdoor screens a new horror

was unscrolling from America, and conversations

with no calls to punish or pray

broke out all around me, in English, putting emphasis

on pragmatics. What has

pragmatics to do with our touristing in the ruins

over which a seagull made a W

—or was it a bent drill bit, a (sorry) augur?

Or that the back catalog

of songs in the temples’ open cellae was amplified

to drown out loss of life,

with empty trays carried aloft by pine trees high

in the hills, listing like Corybantes?