The Bibiena Canto

and after they had removed his image

                                 from the academy

and carried it along to its sanctuary

amidst the long necks of the salpinx

                                  there where no masks hung

heavy with figs the detail

                               for Bibiena was

in Parga

                      abyssody effigy ache

for fête théâtrale fantasmagorique

pazu

zupa

fly fortis

foo sphere

could those long silences seem more furious?

Barnaby your Abbess crow

and Earinus gone from Domitian (what sense is sense lost?)

                          to but hear the tumu

tumu of the golden fox

                                waiting in the chest

                                   of the clay cold bride,          that ship

                    with           which          you                             met the shallows

                                                              for a foo in long heart

                                                 for a question

of Art,             the maquettes tremble                        to the open air

                                            its plain face folly

                                       force aware

                                                 and touch the wet soil

                                        for its graven hand                (too close)

here the public pyre

                                       left

                                             strange scatter

              Sulla bite the blood goblin

THING

                                    long lost lex in the Phlegraean Fields

                                  (who searches the grain for the dis-remembered?)

      all-writing, all-thinking

the severed head                          still moving in the dream

                                            but the looking done

and the body                                                          now eating itself 

                        away

left Postuma only

                                        part of an odd leek flower (optime modice confusa)

a theriac 

to the entrance 

of the knot