🍂🌿 🍂🌿 🍂🌿

“Each part of the forest has a name,” she said,
“and you live in Ciappino;”

dark-trunked edge
of the mountain forest, gigantic temple
that catches sunsets * dense wall of columns
like whalebones sucking day-time
* exhaling vapour in the evening;

we all drank liquors in those mists
draped through the piazzas *

below her town, ruined city
with its two circular altars: one raised,
for Demeter, one burrowed
for her daughter Persephone: a stone socket
which you put your hand into
with vows for the underworld;

buried grain, buried flesh, buried metals,
all the underworld riches;

whereas in the forest earth, high wolf-beds,
the pre-city shelter
with wooden temples of owls
and glistening wet avenues,
you can’t bury things. The soil
stays wet, and writhing; if you
put your hand in, something would
reach out, and grab you