Libraries

Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.

Aurelius & Furius, true comrades, 
whether Catullus penetrates to where in 
outermost India booms the eastern ocean's 
    wonderful thunder;

whether he stops with Arabs or Hyrcani, 
Parthian bowmen or nomadic Sagae; 
or goes to Egypt, which the Nile so richly 
    dyes, overflowing;

even if he should scale the lofty Alps, or 
summon to mind the mightiness of Caesar 
viewing the Gallic Rhine, the dreadful Britons 
    at the world's far end-- 

you're both prepared to share in my adventures, 
and any others which the gods may send me.
Back to my girl then, carry her this bitter