On the Appian Way           
                  

When I reached the Tomb of Cecilia Metella
along the road lined with cypresses
and the timbre of the custodian's greeting
was the sting of your radiance in my veins,

when I looked beyond the walls into open fields
and deciphered in the cryptic markings
of parasol pines a code for passion
signified outside the forms of flesh,

when I stood with other travelers
under ruined stone arches to hear the custodian
praise the love of Metellus for Cecilia--
“dispossessed, she was his only possession,”--

the burnt eloquence of words--
so much a part of you--returned
and line by line I began to read
that book of smoke your illness.