On
Lago di Garda: a time to collect thoughts
and
renew love. All morning under my ear
the
lure of water clonks through the dark
in
the lonely Lilo on which I ride,
bronzed
by a tourist sun, arms sunk in cool,
a
fugitive, an unnorthed compass pin,
idle
inside the closed eyes’ hatch of red.
Far
cry of bathers scribbles on my ear
like
mobilising nerves a war away.
I
turn and stare across the hot wide lake
and
look up valleys, it seems, fifty miles.
Clothed
in crease from new duck pants to smile,
I
strut night streets,
follow
the echo of a dark I have,
drifting
through postcard streets
in
Bardolino to the lakeside quay.
I
watch the sunset peel its orange in
the
dying sea. The lovers, white,
sit
and take coffee with the scene.
From
far away the valley unseen pours
its
pricks of light in a great Nile of dark,
foreclosing
in that dark the dark
soft
silt of pledge in cups.
And
another day without you is nearly gone.
