![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lapidarium at Raurica Augusta
Friday, 14 August 2009 07:24White rattles on curled leaves, but past these hedges,
worn pediments and cold gravestones display
abbreviated Latin, losing edges
and meaning with the snow. For this one last thing,
we stop to look and feel what rocks once told
the world, though I read just what surfaces say,
not texts: this late, my hand holds only cold,
my eyes see weather echo weathering.
I stamp my feet, breathe clouds, and puzzle while
her camera captures the current state of stone.
Across the road, a temple falls to gray.
Glances agree--the storm is here to stay.
With one last picture of a freezing tile,
we leave in ruins what the snow has sown.
---L.
worn pediments and cold gravestones display
abbreviated Latin, losing edges
and meaning with the snow. For this one last thing,
we stop to look and feel what rocks once told
the world, though I read just what surfaces say,
not texts: this late, my hand holds only cold,
my eyes see weather echo weathering.
I stamp my feet, breathe clouds, and puzzle while
her camera captures the current state of stone.
Across the road, a temple falls to gray.
Glances agree--the storm is here to stay.
With one last picture of a freezing tile,
we leave in ruins what the snow has sown.
—28 November 2005; 12 August 2009
Only after posting this did I look at my notes and realize what should have been obvious, that it's a first draft -- one I'd never gotten around to revising. So, a revision, focusing on clearing up that muddled middle as well as smoothing the "line of direction" as I've learned to call it. There may be more to do, but I don't yet know how to do it (such as fix the rhythm of "camera captures the current").---L.