The angelic blur of light and glass

La Macchina

We will go by car with Olivia because her skin bears
the child of the delicately pressed Mediterranean sun.
We will pass hills swelling with bruised pearls of indigo
sugar, past dozing priests on stone benches who look up
to catch the angelic blur of light and glass, our sainted
smiles a fleeting smear stained in the name of God.



We will cross bridges built of blessless blood for armies
more vanquished than the day can defeat us by, over rivers
run restless with ruin and reproach. There will be children
chasing hoops in fountain squares, women on bicycles
bearing baskets of fruit and bread, flowers stranded on carts
that impress the pleated air with hue and fragrance. There
will be villages patinaed in erosive rain, roads that lead to
countries you cannot travel to but by reverie. We will go by
car because to sit beside Olivia is to know the black censure
of a scriptured woman, a woman forged from elements found
only in the denatured imprint of a perilous, primeval world.



In her presence nothing is modern. One becomes single-
celled and utile. If it pleases her, we will be consumed
this day while the sea slips itself from the rings of its tidal
vows, mystrous and immeasurable as red sulfur quickened by
a blue kiss that would sing the harsh psalms of an unrepentant
thirst. We will go by car because Vesuvio might rouse by the
blaspheme of our templed feet, because Pompeii will deliver us
burnt offering and bibled wine if we but huddle with her the night,
because la Madonna delle Macchina wishes it so and there are few angels wandering the markway towards Umbria; no lanterns against the sun should it fall onto its sword of dusk; no engines
but hers to purr honey and salvation beneath the occluded stars.

We will go by car
with Olivia because
there is no other way.

Joseph Gallo
November 22, 2005