Poem of the Week

Sometimes at night it comes back, that one day in Rome,

when the snowstorm at the centre of the globe abates,

your fingers glide south and mine.

                                                                                          The metronome

of hours stops dead and we’re in—the eternal glyptotheque.

Taking the taxi again, past all the crumbling arcades,

past capitals truncated by time, torsos flayed by the sun,

sneaking in behind the backs of those dripping-wet naiads

before plunging at last into Bernini’s fantastical world.

Take it all in! Gazelles in short skirts and skin-tight trousers,

a patchwork of marble, elephants carrying obelisks.

Baroque flights of clouds, drunk here in espresso cups.

Stopped at the traffic lights, street boys flogging mimosa.

That one day shrank, as we touched, to a single hour—

And we sank, in each other’s arms, into the hotel mirror