Always on the lookout for sudden beauty
and finding it in the sag of a plane tree,
precariously leaning from its fellow of shadows,
like Rapunzel from her high sorrow.
On Saturday afternoons, late, the empty churches
seemed most like home, in each white and blue tile
there was resident a grandmotherly peace
which was absent from the otherwise quiet streets,
absent from the empty churches even when the master
was napping or strolling idle among the closing shops.
In the time of the grandfathers a violent asceticism
had threatened at every turned corner,
also on the lookout for sudden beauty.
A sleeping braid fallen from the hammock of its
headscarf, a glimpse of olive cheek,
the caught ember unmilding a woman’s eyes,
a band of red worn not as ornamentation but as
defiant hope.