It was I think in a small town in Ohio

I taped to the wall above my office desk the postcard
Of Klimt's painting called The Park

   An eye is opened
in a tree
by paring away the bark,

Is that what he's saying? You can't be sure—
And this isn't the usual stance of prayer;
Still, it's what I hear as I look at him—

A cunning oracle withholds the best.
The tax on prophecy is not to tell
the founder of a city how his sister

Once upon a time I loved your rectum
as well as your ear, your skin took on
the majesty of feather when you spread

   Waking in silence and, through tilted blinds,
the mark of red bougainvillea—pink light tossed
         at a white door. Out of sleep, I turn

Hermione, Helen, Hilda, I have been,
my pencil picking from inside a weighted
statue, or tree, my skin stiffened, mated

Everything on the outside is the same this morning. On the
   outskirts of Kiev,
our farmland overturned, the cows' mouths grinding in

Niccolo is restless in his bed. He wants
to run, wants to cut out over the humped
Italian countryside while the fields are still

Now that I am up here in the sky I can see
The mare di San Tommaso is a puddle of ink,
A hierarchy of imperial blue tints, tempting