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| The Danube, The Black Sea And Beyond When we reached Vienna jets were searing the skin of the sky vapor threads above our heads tied into new alphabets or maps or spells you flirted with a young Turk for coffee and glühwein and pastry and it began to rain The ferris wheel is an engine turning an espionage clock beneath the streets the whole city is a detonator, an atomic egg timer counting down to some age when Empress Erzsebet's courtiers bow in the imperial butterfly house or to a future deathless Vienna hands no longer timid feather-zither to paramour cheeks fountains! accordions! ravenous to eat the world It is raining on Vienna rooting for the customs certificate in the cabin I dislodge a secret deck of postcards webbed with india ink like a bombed library oh Nazirah, his clumsy foreign scrawl invoking Nazirah dismissing you, hungering you once more Aeroplanes scar the heavens, coffee and glühwein you and me, the latest rain to feed the Danube our storm courses past villages, across nations to somewhen mingle and distill the distant waters of the Black Sea and beyond make me the one |
Rio de Janeiro There's a hole in me, I am leaking the boat whispers he ties together carnival feathers by moonlight fumbling to conjure the correct cryptomantic sequence of her skirt's parakeet colours as she stepped onto the pier and melted into the city He crept out to find her all manner of lovemaking in doorways bodies exploding like grenades hour after hour, street after street finally he saw her dress except it was on a woman in a soldier's arms and her face except it was burnished bright with ecstasy The boat whispers I am leaking I need you
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