New Poem

Posted on inPoetry

European Elegy

Delphic effusions shadow forth
the shabby pageant
of phantasms I left behind
and washed my hands of.

Dire friezes of prophetic masks
deck plaster facades;
proud eagles flutter vainly from
the Citadella.

Sigils glitter on tile shingling
the Golden Roof;
black ravens circle the White Tower
near Traitors Gate.

Karst relics of forgotten seas
crown crumbling summits;
vast shadows pivot round the gnomon
of Grosser Mythen.

Ragpicking on the bones of gods,
tour parties picnic
among the shards of shattered nations
crazed in the recessional
of the Hall of Mirrors
and Trianon.

The Milky Way dives in the river
at Stari Most:
an ashlar scimitar across
the cold Neretva.

Titanic Saturn eats his sons,
the Golden Age
cannibalizing rabidly
the family silver.

Ada Kaleh’s lost haven sinks
beneath the Danube;
gypsies corral their caravans
on urban spoilheaps.

I woke from fever dreams,
stiff with shit and stardust;
you errant conscience strays,
a gaunt hussar
lost on the glacis of a starfort
vaster than worlds.