Behind the heat-devils that dance on Trojan sands,
A silver crescent wavers.
It looks out of place on the placid blue
Like a lone fish scale, flicked and floating
On saltwater – suspended for a moment –
Before it sinks,
Swallowed by sea,
And blurs to nothing in its depths.
From these high white walls I hear
The shriek of an owl. The violence
Of its call astounds:
A night-born banshee’s wail
That shatters still air into slivers
Cutting at the belly of the night.
Above me, the Milky wheel turns round and round,
Spinning Fortune’s golden thread
Into Fate’s mouth.
Her iron teeth are ready to bite
When Fury commands,
And between the stars,
Venus descends in silent harmony
While Mars blots the sky with red.
As Phoebus wakes,
Spreading rays low and long
From the lazy lanterns of his chariot,
Each pillar of the temple is bathed
In rosy light. It weaves
A net of rainbows from the dewdrops
Of their night-sweat.
That cold, Palladian marble
Is fire-dyed, its rivulets
Awash with a toil
Of gleam and shadow.
But the acanthine curves
Are overwrought.
The colonnades shift with figures
Too lost to be seen.
Their limbs are stone,
Their bodies ice.
The sunrise freezes at their touch.
In the midst of it all,
Pallas Athena waits;
She is waiting for the arms
That must drag her out of Troy.
And all the statues are weeping,
For in the garden beneath the wall,
A swallow sings of
The blood that swells in its breast.
And all the statues are weeping,
For in the garden, under the ivy,
A nightingale chants
That it will always remain
Misunderstood.
