Three Short Poems About Italy

Capri roofless cubes, spidery with wire, cakes of azure and enzian; above at the Villa San Michele Rilke smiles down at the broken beaches, at coves of defiant waves, compacted sea Pompeii a chessboard of honest stones open to a sky of hushed shouts; we huddle in a boned frame of another life, a stopped day Napoli warm and secret, olive-eyed an infinite beauty makes a new face as we gaze ape-like from our bus; an act of moment