The night is folly without the moon, trees blank s.p.a.ce against a frontal sky where lattice work from a bled fish reveals skeletal markings will not administer the red jack of hearts to a mistress sea.

Most fickle, the ways of a c.o.c.kroach (I don't recommend them) to offerings of white linen, cold squares atop a stone diamonded floor.

Palaver shacks drone in ghostly light communicating some message about eel runs up the black river, the equivalent brush of tombstones against dark nightsoil.

Tiny bars open as cubicles.

proverbial flashes of the coming evening, haciendas to count every blessing.

The road to such places snarls a dusty pleasure and will heat thin blood to boil in the daylight hours.

Page 45 II

Sweat corrodes the cork's emplacement about green bottlenecks, its azure breath tossing back pools of spa.r.s.e liquid.

I picture ships placed within such bottles as bannisters along corrugated highways, seawater rusting from within the steamfitters's tonsorial edge.

Haze thickens as sails blur to an artist's brush, then squiggles in the oilpaint of memory -- her sides fashioning red wounds as pigment surfacing from robotical crustaceans lancing the bottom of a deeper crevice.

III

My steps clank to the gaoler's key to become, within, handmaidens to thorned plants acting as fuselage along the building's exterior.

Afar, a white seagull sits as a bespectacled tourist gracing a buoy like a madras shirt.

Early stars in an afternoon sky are expansive in Chateau Lafitte finery, the Rothschilds of the universe playing a cosmic baccarat.

Page 46 A girl in a brandy snifter of a dress -- dark, sensual, runs through tomes of my mind.

It's a hall of mirrors there; the radiating gla.s.s of the sea, twilight splendour in tall gra.s.s, the hands of thick mahogany chairs grimacing against perspiring walls.

I sponge water like a good midshipman off the brow of a leaking vessel.

Nowhere are there signs of more than partial seepage though smoke in the back corridors exists from the fiery aguandine.

IV

Green palms unfurl as flags to the accordian of my eyes, blinking back the strong belt of sunlight that precisely floods the room.

Sailors jostle this crowd of memories, some surly lipped with broad tattoes.

A naked mermaid presses her thighs 'gainst memory door, then winks as the stellar crust of oblivion takes me.

Page 47 In sleep, waterfront toughs are transformed to storeowners that smile, exchange pleasantries in Saba.

(French gendarmes embrace on the other side cl.u.s.tering like starfish on the twin b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a beach.)

I devour cups not of riverwater in this cell but the best pink champagne at the captain's reception.

With hatfuls of intermittent rest, blurred outlines recede into mists thin as General Winter's treasured April snows.

The bony M of a hatpin, the pa.s.skey to better redress of fortune -- the turnstills, concealed within lavabeds of bladegra.s.s.

beckon upon the return voyage home.

Page 48 REGALIA

If the rich are different they show it with the clarity of their table as Scolt FitzGerald decreed, the breathless hush of their regalias, the manner in which wedgewood & crystal are cleaned to a polished exactness -- the shimmer of expensive china no less repet.i.tive than the hulking boys waiting in window stops; monsoon rain pelting the upper Punjab plains.

Page 49 SAN CRISTOBAL

A gypsy sits in a taverna joking with a sailor who has left bridges and maidens along islets connecting many a storied sea.

Ducats tumble from a cloth bag the way the gypsy remembers caravans and the remembrance of gold steeled against warm flesh in moonlight of his native Umbria.

Lavender is the coat of dreams along navy blue hemmings the colour of the gypsy's eyes, the blood's colour progeny whose men of wealth both are related to.

Page 50 The gypsy stares at the taverna wall and the ducats gleaming to outside rain.

Men joke at rail depots where in a like fashion water splashes mud into little arches up a riverbank.

Neither has the shallows of minnows at his command.

Bunched up stubble in the wind cannot fathom lies or gender hope -- it is lhe province of the mind, the coinage of perhaps a Spaniard on discovering San Cristobal, one's own sieglo oro in fortune squandered in sunlight with only the sweating Appolosa still straining on this, the last taverna ride.

Page 51 GUADALQUIVIR

In a pleasureless world, pure pleasure exists.

Particles of sunlight, exquisite with nightdrops & leaves stringent with dew, persuade tributaries with inset eyes to depart down foible breast, sticky fingers up delightful steps.

And taking pleasure with an earthen spoon -- sipped long and hard down tubes and winding entrails; soft relief canyons swollen blood vessels.

For your brow shines like olive branches, Guadalquivir's river or nectar drawn from golden wells and, as such, unfolds loveliest eyes out from fond embrace not hedging lies.

My darling, amongst flowering cherub trees a moment shared with you is pretty mirth accounts all Arcadia's treasures, the angelic breath off pa.s.sing wings.

Page 52 LEAVES OF THE CECROPIA TREE

And what of privileged things mur & frankinscense or sandlewood -- yes, teak, ambergris or skies of indigo blue -- I cite these gifts, caravans offered as treasure Christopher Wren putting the domes of St. Paul in place like worn spectacles over a cherubic face.

The last gargoyle pops in sight near Notre Dame such cathedrals are whitened sepulchre stones in "stately pleasure domes decreed".

I see the Taj Mahal where Mahatma Gandhi might have trod.