Water Clocks
The singing of the blind school
children and the
Mediterranean’s flat expanse are metaphors
for every kind of solitude made
forgivable by time.
The hillside museum with rows of empty
earthen vessels is full of it. A stillness
so replete
it resembles something like intimacy.
A fullness only partially fathomed.
Like water clocks
and sundials that allowed time to be
translated into elements: droplets, shadows.
And the laughter
of bathers from the spiaggetta.
~
The train stops just outside of Naples
where I buy a glass
of cold juice squeezed from tangerines
and walk into Pompeii. I couldn’t have
imagined the
magnitude of it. Brilliant pillars flush
with sky. Temples where sunlight
streams white
and seems to radiate from inside
the stones. Certain histories require
forgetfulness.
Others, strict belief. But I think
some histories live us. In the higher cities
of the brain,
even the speechless ones are burning. 
Reproduced by permission of Yale University Press.
Nursery Rhyme from Another Century
The Oranges in Uganda
Statuary
Such Insomnia and the Shape
Piano Lessons II
Water Clocks