Ezra’s Dead

A Work in Progress
35

in a library aisle 

scrolls newly added…

“May I, for my own self, song’s truth reckon…”

from Philadelphia he’d traveled to Venice 

then to London Imperial center of Empire 

to found a new school like Apollonius Rhodius

writing SeaFarer in Alexandria

Ezra peered at a vaporetto’s wake 

                                  intent on its scrollable steep incline

rolling itself up to slap him awake

         silhouetted by Guidecca’s skyline 

                          standing still on a stone wall splashed by waves

                                 stopped along Fondamenta Zattere

watching how light with water misbehaves

           reflecting Redentore’s dome that day

                           Out for an ice cream one bright October

he sat outside an ice cream shop

oblivious of all in sunlight silent

while Ginsberg solaced his sins

heeding lyre playing Orpheus well

Eurydice wailing that life is hell

that scroll snapped shut

Ah Tony, you would have done better elsewhere

with better material 

nobody ever noticed those doors on bronze pivots

opening to let English go where it now resides

when it isn’t in Italy

where spaghetti 

shot from six guns

conquered Hollywood’s great

Ah Tony you would have done great in Milan

with design done by gifted Etruscans

you could have gone to France to see Merwin

Newcastle might have been more fit

going further north into deeper warmth

there is Edinburgh

Paris of the North

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025