And you whose face so famously winces
from its inner self, ghost trace of pockmarks
of some earlier you, lips agape, like a corpse’s,
you—you of no fixed address, no idée fixe,
gifted in fetish of doubting and double regret,
you must set loose from this abandoned shore,
perchance to trip upon another more
unyielding. This milieu, this passing second,
this whirling wheel collapsed in tungsten light,
is Rome as Athens was to the Romans.
One wanderer seeks matter in the havoc
of his wandering, as you seek substance
in the doubting self, confiding to interrogative you,
hedging thoughts as if they might portend mortality.