Cool
(With David Mayernik in mind)


The blinding light is a strong white in colour
And comes down in a shaft through a round hole
Made at the top of a shallow round dome
How long did it take your wit to infer
What this might mean to your blessed soul?
That maybe here's the place you can call home

A man can enter a temple for free
Where the shafts of light have frozen to stone
Grooved like the dresses of lady dancers
Forming rings and trestles next to a tree
Turning heads now and then towards the throne
For two thousand years looking for answers

The world according to your building is round
Although it is easy to see it flat
The sun comes up and then it goes down again
It does this every day without a sound
If this doesn't seem as great as all that
It's been that way ever since it began

You know that I've been searching for closure
In the flux of ideas into my brain
Because categories are natural things
I'd like to know more words and that's for sure
But in truth I don't have the will to gain
From every sack of corn the mule-cart brings

The mind measures mountains up and under
And bores curiously through all the layers
No accounting will give over any clues
On how to read a Corinthian order
Nor the hidden meanings of stepping stairs
Nor where to enter the tower to pay your dues

Don't they tell you in church about mysteries
And the attendant drama, faith and trust
In the things we all depend on for health?
And of the pictures in the galleries
Showing the crux of matters in their thrust
About the strange affair between love and wealth?

But in truth I don't have the will to gain
From every sack of corn the mule-cart brings

The mind measures mountains up and under
And bores curiously through all the layers
No accounting will give over any clues
On how to read a Corinthian order
Nor the hidden meanings of stepping stairs
Nor where to enter the tower to pay your dues

Don't they tell you in church about mysteries
And the attendant drama, faith and trust
In the things we all depend on for health?
And of the pictures in the galleries
Showing the crux of matters in their thrust
About the strange affair between love and wealth?

Yet, we still wish to be fashionable
If life made by the powers of desire
Is all we see, would I then be a fool
For calling my muses all reasonable
As I expound that, it's the nature of fire,
That passions must smolder before they cool?

Rome, 7 1 2007