.jpg)
Sport 39: 2011
Degree of Empathy Required
Degree of Empathy Required
The Department of Italian now seeks a lecturer or senior lecturer
(depending on qualifications and experience)
—Auckland University
From Tiber’s bank
I spurred on the trio,
ignoring notes her piano
dropped in the water.
She was losing her footing,
slipping into marsh
where the two boys tried to
play woodwind
by blowing into reeds.
*
If not for the break
I found in the fence about
the Roman theatre,
where Greeks had staged
The Wasps (and Sting
played one summer),
that child peddling ‘ancient’ coins
might have followed us
all over Ephesus.
*
page 131
Full of the red wine of me,
a mosquito in Verona
paused in the space
between acts. I didn’t
snap shut the programme,
bearing in mind
whose blood would be spilled.
The blot in an otherwise
worthy opera.
*
From one coast to
another, a brick for every
body under Hadrian.
The only other walker,
far as my zoom could see
through drizzle,
wondered would I let him
capture the wall
with nobody on it.