Song

The moon feigning a slow, baleful death.
Young restless souls enthralled by the performance.

Artists littering the streets with failed aspirations.
Money and hunger burning like effigies in back alleys.

People crying for truth, people crying for justice, people crying for etc. …
A prophet instructing them to sing instead:

“The salted earth, the ruins of Carthage,
A queen burnt to a redolent smoke
Over the Punic sands—

O what distinction, Dido or Elissa,
To have dared the conflagration of love
With mortal flesh!

I do not believe for one moment
That we are just meat, ordained for whiteness of bones
After brief years of pains and desires.

So be unafraid, ye cut and broken people:
The Fates themselves are humbled
When we sing of one voice, our lives.”

A bell tolling the idle hour in a Mediterranean town.
Old men complaining about the weather over olive dishes.

A fisherman staring into the pall before daybreak.
A kettle on the stove, hissing at his silence.

Somewhere, Truth and Beauty are copulating
as two disparate stars in a constellation

(Of Hermaphroditus, perhaps.)