The full moon on the Colosseum
Lights up the legends, shedding shadows
On the exhausted center, on the arches
Where the centuries played heartless games:
Earthquake, prince, barbarian
Brought down the tufa and the travertine,
Ate the arcades and raped the iron
—And willed this gaping splendor to the
moon!
The Venerable Bede foretold it,
Jeremiah, John, Isaiah,
Hebrews, apostles, visionaries,
Recorders of the future
Fall, all mysteries divined—
We are as the smoke and foam
Without the overflow of Love:
“When falls the Colosseum Rome shall fall,
And when Rome falls with it shall fall the
world.”
Thus Bede; and thus the Cabala
That vaulted language on the word—
The corbel and the cornice of creation,
Keystone of Zimzum, holy love, light.
So here among Corinthian pilasters
And ruined cages, rackrent corridors,
Where, by one reflex, beasts and men
To nature’s howling lust were moved,
I stand in moonlight and klieglight
Among the lonely watchers lonely,
Prowling or waiting for quick touch
or soldi.
Under the blind arcs and the tall black cross
I see Rome fall, and Israel. O, strange
tryst
Of pagany and prophecy: we boil
The fluid world in one arena, hurl
The crooked error in the animal,
The dirty word—into creation’s arch!
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