(in memoriam Harold Acton, 1904-1994)
Aesthete and salamander, double-scorched.
Anna Comnena’s lucid eye restored
to a city she could not see
the peridotite details which the wavering torch
lifted from the shadow.
Exposed as casual sparks on stone,
a stone’s throw from the Adriatic Sea.
The blue god of memory guards
the chastity of flirts, the prudish firebirds
of Covent Garden spilling out of doors
from dressing rooms, stalls and smokers’ yards.
La Scala was a pale afterthought,
Petrouchka between Anna and the Moor,
a mirror’s bittersweet progression into shards.
Anna’s Platonic prose, hourglassed
in its beveled and Toscana gloss,
proved a model in smallish bites,
though resistant to abridgement’s collapse.
Scissoring style from content,
the affectionate curse as tribute,
the substitute of English for Byzantine light.