To Dionysus

Where once sweet winds of reason blew
the race was for the sons of man,
not gods; now lizards sun.
The echoes of the triumph fade
into mosaics in the tepidarium.
And all that’s left of emperors–a hand,
a foot for pillaging.

For how could savages be moved
by looking on forbidden joys,
O young Dionysus?
Now beauty pines alone, and in these sunlit halls
the wounds of love
are suppurating stone.

The Capitoline Museum, Rome. September, 1989.

The Rape of Cythera

Beloved Wife:
I will create for you a garden,
testament of my love.

In it the roses will always be in bloom.
The perfumed air will be fanned
by the outspread tails of peacocks.

Your laughter will alternate with sighs of delight.

Carlo Borromeo, 1630.

Beloved Husband:
I cannot find you in my garden.

I cannot see you for the throng of pilgrims
bearing votive offerings to the Unicorn:

cigarette butts and chewing gum,
the plastic wrapping of illicit picnics,
the paper on which they blew their noses.

The gardeners torment my peacocks
until they wail like banshees.
One million pilgrims, two million feet
pounding the roots of my camphor tree.
How can I bear the pain?

Round and round the pilgrims gyrate in my garden:
fourteen minutes to snap,
to trample, pluck and poke.
The tour guide waits at the vaporetto.

Beloved Husband:
if you love me, build me a garden.
Build for me a garden in a fortress,
a fortress which has no gate.

Isabella d’Adda dei Borromeo, 1989.