Lia Purpura, Parasol Mushroom (detail), featured in AGNI 102
Context
The traffic’s nonexistent,
The sun is first blocked out
Then difficult,
In your face—a loud glare
When I turn the corner
Up the private road to where
I will spend an hour
With one or other daughter
Of the rich, reading Chaucer
Or Congreve or Shakespeare
While the day prepares
To disappear,
Casting into shadow the pool,
The garden’s converted stable
And ancestral stele,
Too near to it this evening
For anything
But mute approving
Glances down the hill
Where the beautiful
Suburbs climb and sprawl
While the girl copies out:
‘“There’s vice that most
I do abhor”—Relate
Quotations to the title,
To the social as well
As to the personal.’
Published:
| Online 2007

John McAuliffe
Related Articles
Vanished Qilou Building, Bali
Poetry by Yang Biwei • Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing
Myth
Poetry by Leila Chatti
Digging Up My Fathers
Poetry by Alessandro Vitali