A WRESTLER NAMED PLATO Not the bum we hollered at on the south side of Chicago, who’d twist the other bum’s head between the ropes till he miraculously extricated himself and stomped on the first …

From the volume The Trojans (1985) THE QUESTION OF THE LION IN LANDSCAPE ART A landscape (a French master would have called it two centuries ago). That’s why I can’t paint it (I don’t even want …

She stands beyond this gulf of greedy pilgrims washed in alien voices. Born not of the sea, as her sister rising on wave and cockle shell, but of blue air, harbingered by winds. Lightly on …

AFTER CHAMBER MUSIC (Una serata musicale alla Villa Fabbricotti) In a summer’s garden long ago, (lute cradled by a handsome youth) young girls gathered all aglow wanting to sing to their hearts’ loves there in …