And the last poem I'm going to read from this book is called
"To Cedar."
And that's the poet, a good friend of mine, Cedar Sigo.
And I wrote this sitting at a windy bar cafe in Northern
Italy, I guess.
Not I guess.
I was, in fact, there.
Sorry, I'm just looking at it.
OK, "To Cedar."
Lake Garda's winds blow the chips out of their bowls.
Another common distortion.
"Mag" in big white letters across a burgundy drape hanging
from a castle window in the old fortress,
transitioning into local museum.
Aperol through a straw goes down too fast,
breaking squibbles in the shanks of giants, purple pastrami
layers of mountains change colors by the minute,
looming as feint.
In Padua, the heat is neared in needles,
little lizards reimagining the gully outside Giotto's starscape
so oddly figured as realist by the intro video
an irreality TV version of wall text.
I swooned for all my anti-redemptive tendencies
at the site of Jericho's sleep, goats
and an angel making a perimeter in a high arching
square of another desert.
Folds of robes in the sun flats, bugging.
Rearrangement requires bone fragments, if not
the whole hoary skeletux.
Easy to get the first drink here.
The cove more brood than bruise.
You were in the hospital after a stroke,
and you will see me soon in New York.
This feels impossible to cut up.
I can only be late everywhere.
In your honor, a continuation honor
burns in envy to keep up with.
The second drink, suitably stronger,
finally arrives delivered by coot and crested grebe.
Does war dream of war, Onoda asks
in the jungle of Werner's twilight?