waking up view out of the sleeping-car compartment            

                                                                                 

 

behind an embankment’s yellow gorse

the landscape disappears. fellinian

farmsteads & bundled branches in

 

meager little woods. there, behind

the tedder, on top of the rocky hill,

on the left hand side the cappella

 

della madonna di san brizio with

signorelli’s last judgement, a demon

in his libidinous desire, center of the

 

inferno, carrying on his shoulders one

of the damned, a young naked woman,

an ongoing, unlimited abduction that we’ve

 

known since kafka’s trial, a constant

cycle of law as a pure form of emptiness,

yet appearing as a sentence, discernible

 

as punishment & preventing the true acquittal for all of us.

 

 

published in: Florida English, 2005, Vol. 3, p.36