Across from the Winter Palace

Do you remember when you began to travel?

It lent you this astonishing lens and you kept a journal

That rode in your breast pocket like a stone,

There you wrote “Limoges — ” and “Altenkirchen”;

And when you saw a peasant, kissed, or passed out — 

Died for twenty seconds — in the heat on the hill above

Marseille you would rush out the notebook and make a note — 

Sometimes just an x in the top right corner — 

And ideally you would brood about that later.

Which led slowly to the dark hot bar

Where you enjoy a glass of beer across from the Winter Palace in summer.

In the rose-and-blue windows of the basilica

Today radiant burghers stood and learned Mercy in a circle

Around Stephen, recognized

By the pebble enthroned in his skull and the scarlet ooze.

While in your system the amphetamines progress.

The idea is they’ll give you heart to haul yourself up and cross

The limestone plaza. And when at the gate of the place

You pay you can enter the Palace.