The Whisper Networks

The hotel showers were splendidly profligate.
The aqueduct that fed the big
fountains down the street probably ran underneath
my bed, giving the water pressure
a nice bump. These were veritable circuses of water:
crowds pleased to see, qua
the wonders of  Roman hydraulic engineering,
water shatter its own mirror
never incurring bad luck. That weird accord
of rationality with credulity back
of everything; a double consciousness, sticky,
with surfacing its principle aesthetic.
It was the fountains that helped me remember
a spinto’s stratagem
of  holding her breath for at least four minutes,
training herself to dive in,
then, if not divadom. Naiads must be, conversely,
vocal masters.

What do they sing? They sing odes to the Pantheon,
whose niches stand empty
of the gods that a ray of sun through the oculus
goes on splashing with awful
clarity on its rounds of the heavens; the architect,
Hadrian, was the passionate
emperor. Another temple of  his, nicked of its storied
goddesses roma and amor,
put to work the magical properties of palindromes
for the good of the state. A pet falcon
sacrificed so that its earthly years might be annexed
to the emperor’s was a Five-Year Plan;
never forget the desk blotter in the administrative
office was blood red. I conflate
it with the rosebushes at the House of the Vestals.
Twice I saw a bride dressed
up, toddling in the street, posing for photographs,
and if they turn up in Vogue,
I won’t be the wiser. On close inspection,
those holes that fleck
the ancient masonry weren’t made by bullets,
but hooks that secured marble.
Monumental doors testify to the height of the heroes
that walk the earth then disappear.
Now what are the odds that the moon in a pellucid
cerulean dusk shakes loose
as a disc of marble spolia? It’s all a psychic recyclable
that seems endlessly up for grabs.
The Romans exit doors sideways, like cats flattening
themselves on a ledge, then
venture boldly into traffic. If a sudden access of quiet
obtains, it’s in a square of colossi
where executions took place. The windswept expanse
is both style and semantics.

So, up glaring stairs, in a killing sun, I hazarded
my life for a snatched reward
at the door handle with brass asps intertwined,
under ceilings some painter
wanted to strike us all blind with. (“Con forza!”)
On the outdoor screens a new horror
was unscrolling from America, and conversations
with no calls to punish or pray
broke out all around me, in English, putting emphasis
on pragmatics. What has
pragmatics to do with our touristing in the ruins
over which a seagull made a W
—or was it a bent drill bit, a (sorry) augur?
Or that the back catalog
of songs in the temples’ open cellae was amplified
to drown out loss of life,
with empty trays carried aloft by pine trees high
in the hills, listing like Corybantes?