Country Music: Selected Early Poems

Homage to Baron Corvo

Homage to Baron Corvo Of all the poses, of all the roles, This is the one I keep: you pass On the canal, your pope's robes Aflame in a secret light, the four Oars of your gondola white As moth wings in the broken dark, The quail-eyed fisher-boys Sliding the craft like a coffin out to sea; The air grows hard; the boat's wake Settles behind you like a wasted breath. * (For months, Corvo, you floated through my sleep As I tried to track you down: That winter you lived in a doorway; The days and nights on these backcanals You spent in a musty blanket, Your boat both bed and refuge— And writing always The book, the indescribable letters . . . Was it the vengeance only That kept you alive, the ripe corkscrew Twisted and deep in the bottle's throat? One afternoon—in the late spring—I went To San Michelc, to see The sealed drawer that holds your name, To take you flowers, as one Is moved to do for the dead, and found Not even a vase to put them in. Leaving, I spread them on the lagoon, 14 Ungraftable shoots of blood. There is, you said, A collusion of things in this world . . .) -x And so you escape. What books there are, Old hustler, will never exhume you, Nor places you stayed. Hadrian, Nicholas Crabbe, you hide Where the dust hides now. Your con with its last trick turned, Stone nightmare come round again— Fadeout: your boat, Baron, edges Toward the horizon, a sky where toads, Their eyes new fire, Alone at the landings blink and blink. Venice 15 ...