the day whirls around
and whirls around again:
fossil-white breath of the bones
of the city that pulsed and sighed a thousand
years before my birth and will –
seized in the hand of this god,
a hand hot and gold –
continue for the next thousand.
a million times the size of me –
oh, how she shudders
and groans under the weight of jet-black grapes,
fat hunks of onyx in the sun.
a double sun, two suns
for good luck in a purple sky
hung by Dionysus, flooded
with red clouds that promise rain.
we come to drink at his fountain,
to lay bare brilliant, wet souls, plant vines
in the cracks, aching
and crawling blind like snakes.
in the glassy white water I see him reflected,
round face like a clock beside my ear.
the city creaks with feet, with a
conscious echo of time not yet spent.
all hands linked: a chain of daisies
dizzy and pink with wine,
we weave on – the afternoon is forever.