Hyperbucolic

from Assisi That Walk

You know, down to its beams, this place, too small to be a town, even though you’ve never laid eyes on it before; you recognize each & every stone of this place, too big to be a village, even though you’ve never set foot in it before. The farther that you walk away from this square,—its buttoned-up church & the pedestal to its caduti (victims of duty)—the sooner you arrive at this bar where you always tell the older drunks your name is Jack. Keep your sweetmeats to yourself at dusk, when all the little terrors descend—vampires out to thicken their blood & witches with caldrons overflowing. You know this night; you recognize the expectation in the passing stares. “But what am I?,” you ask yourself. A pumpkinheaded stranger, grinning crenellation; a cuckoo in this nest of green gauze—almost black where it bunches & where, tomorrow morning when it’s gently pulled apart, scored by cannoning bells, it will shimmer canary on the trees & robin egg between.