r
in London--Parliament Hill,
a brief arm stretch away,
posited strangled chickens
and other assorted heirlooms
in vain attempt for poesy
to thwart poxy.

A stone's throw
off in Hampstead Heath
guns (Big Berthas) could
be heard from the Somme,
German derigibles dropped
incendiaries, the wounded entrained
at Charing Cross and a rascallion

(John Keats by name) drained
a draught at Jack Straw's
Castle near the Spaniards
while Turpin's hanged corpse
was soon to resemble good
English oaker casks
at the Flask.

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

Poltergeist activity
--the sun winding like a staircase
onto the pavement,
rickety afternoon
shooting back thru
shawls of the city.

Tippy-toe. Curtains
ajar, a face at the cross-roads looking,
looking for all the world as
pavement stones,
greasy & black, a thin
oiled compliment to
Mrs. Blight registered
at Old Inn Road.

PICPUS

The day I went to LaFayette's grave, the
concierge became
our tour guide amid an old
ruin of tombstones including bedraggled
de Tocqueville's crypt (and he, heir
apparant of America, too).

There, too, the odd City of St. Louis tribute
Fayettevilles
after yet another "Saint" Louis, despoiler
of the Jews--both sitting, squat and apparant,
in summer dust, so shingle-flat,
mindful of Place De La Nation, more
blood-letting blocks away (so the aristocracy
might be healed).
A chapel nun then reached in loud
silence for our Lord, her black
habit / upraised hands forming a
brilliant crucifix against sky and altar.

Some francs exchanged hands
(Monsieur le keeper, after all,
obliged us by opening
a private cemetery, apres heures),
the graves looked so wretched--
death stylized in military formation,
row on row,
every private carrying a field marshall's
baton only this time of mortality's making,
crestfallen, no Agile Lapin/Moulin Rouge here,
in the joyless, little garden
(not a bird sang),
our old Frenchman narrating/marching
on in The Old Guard, Grand Armee
fashion
a little Napoleonic
his cemetery, his brandy
like his suspender buttons
lost to recent antiquity.

Place des Vosges, Place des Vendomes.
A dish of plaice at the palais
and a royal hippodrome.

ILLUMINAIRE

Elfin & gold bug,
genie in the
twilight of a cave.

Virgin On The Rocks
--Da Vinci's p