View of Rome circa 1200

Bright on the terrace accost him

The night's most radical stare and colossus,

Blanch of the moon-long reach

And smell of the almond:

The Pope, the Only,

His tools all shed - bell, book and candle

weaned like a pasture -

Remembers the coldstreams in that morning's ale

Prefect of Cold in August, standing,

The moon white on his hands in the lands

of the rolling -

Hills without face, their sacred and bovine need

Aloof as the masks of cows.

And he felt the oncoming tide as a valley or she,

And he feared for the fume, the stench,

the wight of his time

That it might swing like a leek

From a perilous hand-rocked gibbet

No crease in its face

Of an axe's kiss

Or a god's lack

Or a crane's look.

Sorely the oxen sway

Clearly as anvils

Sounding the milky hours,

Bells without cavil or tongue... .

And he raises his hand,

Fingers uneven as waxes,

goes in

To his Saints' eleven,

To sleep's elevation most holy and hostile.