Privileges of Travel

You can’t forget you purchased it;
this private tour moves you

In the painting by Guido Reni of Saint Sebastian
in the Palazzo Rosso, which reproduction makes available
to those who travel only on the page, the saint to be

The hulks lie on their sides amid the breakers,
the wrecks of mischance rot. I could lose myself
in riddled waves: sailors drown daily there.

He winds through the party like wind, one of the just
who live alone in black and white, bewildered

On the day of your scan I make a soup
to wean us from meat. Beans soak and blanch
an hour while I slit open the cell-

Tin cans rolling across the patio
wake me. Creeping downstairs I make a plan—
fling open the door to scare the racoons

You can tell by the way the sky
has turned rose and the blue houses
have begun to open their eyes,

The light sifts down from the naked bulb
he’s quickened with a string. He speaks
to no one out of the well of his anger.

The air is measurable. Clocks
bell, publishing hour on hour
each other’s truth, one two, three four:

My voice bends over your neck.
There, to the small of the back
mouth mutes its touch.