Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Saving
- Out of this World
- Observatory
- Zentralfriedhof
- How to Remember
- Europe
- What's Gone Blue
- Plain Tongues
- As the Crow Flies the Sun Rips Day Open
- Boy
- The Roof
- Eva Braun in Linz
- Yellow
- My Girl in California
- St Peter
- The Soldiers
- Palace
- Outside Vienna
- Neutral Air
- Woman
- How to Forget
- The Sound
- In Time
- The Lever
- Fourteen Mistakes
- The Fall
- The Hold I Have
- Centre Strange
- Born Breathing
- The Heads
- Home
- Epilogue
- Maker
- Acknowledgements
Palace
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Saving
- Out of this World
- Observatory
- Zentralfriedhof
- How to Remember
- Europe
- What's Gone Blue
- Plain Tongues
- As the Crow Flies the Sun Rips Day Open
- Boy
- The Roof
- Eva Braun in Linz
- Yellow
- My Girl in California
- St Peter
- The Soldiers
- Palace
- Outside Vienna
- Neutral Air
- Woman
- How to Forget
- The Sound
- In Time
- The Lever
- Fourteen Mistakes
- The Fall
- The Hold I Have
- Centre Strange
- Born Breathing
- The Heads
- Home
- Epilogue
- Maker
- Acknowledgements
Summary
In the tiny crypt of Diocletian's Palace
Santa Lucia is surrounded
by notes for instance please
take care of my father or thank
you for our life here.
Everyone's feet ache on the steps of the bell tower
and the man has been looking for hours but cannot
find the temple
of Jupiter. He has been looking all morning and now
he is sick of the pale stone squares on the ground.
Nearby a guide avoids the word Christian
so as not to admit a ruin's newness.
Two men raise their phones
to snap Santa Lucia
in her lake of letters. This place is like a maze,
a woman says. The man decides if he doesn't
stumble across the temple soon
he will look at it on the internet in his hotel room
even though he has already today referred
to the hotel's internet policy as draconian.
At least he can say he was there.
If there is anything you have forgotten you can ask me how it was,
says Jupiter. In the temple he holds one palm out
with fingers gnarled upwards, still stuck
holding the globe he's lost.
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- Information
- Nowhere Nearer , pp. 24Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018