Autumn In Florence

She wears her hair like a halo, a James Joyce madonna, 
her Irish eyes spitting fire/ sat opposite is her nemesis,
a perverse shadow-form of the self/ made manifest/ 
tempting in her darkness/ in her reading of the runes 
from chalk scrawls on the wall.  

We are sitting in our grape garden, a walled backyard, with 
a trellis overhead, heavy with intoxicating, bulbous black fruit;
and I am reminded momentarily of Seamus Heaney, his fingers 
dripping with summer’s blood/ but more, I think of Hughes/ 
his Crow mocking us, in our tenuous paradise.

In the bar, wrinkled, walnut-brown men
play cards/ the smell of cigars and liqueurs float through
to this backyard, carried on the back of their sing-song,
liquid voices/ a sallow contentment settles, even upon us,
even upon our discontented Northern bellies.

In the still, hot air the thunderclouds gather/ the dark one
is magnetised/ an electrified Durga, she stares into me 
with her dark eyes/ strokes her fake satin, static skirt,
shimmering with small crimson flowers/ it rides up her legs,
and she giggles, as if at a private joke...

And my head dissolves in black, pubic curls of smoke/
I can think of nothing, but lying expired, between these
too-revealed, summer-browned legs/ the blonde one glares,
like she can read my mind... and she can/ she knows me inside
out/ I am transparent stuff to her catholic mind/ I am a nest
of vipers/ a perfidious prod/ a destitute prostitute, stamped upon 
by a jealous god/ she stabs her chest four times/ north south east 
and west/ she implores the holy virgin/ the holy virgin between 
her legs/ the sun burns down, even through this canopy/ and 
black birds rain down black grapes upon the three of us.

In Plaza Santa Spirito, I strip off my sweat stained clothes,
and dunk myself, next to naked, in the lukewarm water
of the fountain/ the sacred spirit doesn’t enter me, but nor
do I enter her/  I am restrained, if not exactly washed clean
of all my dark desires.