Cast from a simile of Paul of Tarsus
Thence depicted as an anchor (ancora
Speme—there’s still hope—get it?) and by suchlike

Ruins are what we make of them, and wrecked 
Imaginations could want to do so little 
With any real rubble. Acres of crumbled bricks,

Once, but once, did I fail my Muse, who, lying
(Golden-shadowed shape) by the flaring candle,
Urged me upward. But there was more to dying

“Mère d’amour et fille de la Mer!”
Over the golden ocean waves of hair
Plunge, bright with her origin, where we

I once saw weeping in a wood
The bears that break the heart of God
When dusty grapes hung from the trees

The fish circle the seas a thousand times
a day, never diverging from the endless
path of blue opening up before them. 

Visiting them, we slow down, straighten up,
as if we were approaching an open coffin
or rows of newborns behind the hospital glass.

Bending over the map on the floor
that unfolds like a rare carpet
we trace our trip with warm, stumbling fingers.

Gleaming in Monday evening candlelight.
Glass and plate and conversation and good
Fortune then unacknowledged even by

Snow fell all night and suddenly there was morning:
a startling vision from a familiar window,
   while yet an ordinary sight: a
         neighboring hill had become itself more