Where broken gods, faded saints, (powerful in antique presence

as old dancers with straight backs, loftily confident,

or old men in threadbare wellcut coats,) preside casually

over the venerable conversations of cypress and olive,

there intrudes, like a child interrupting, tugging at my mind,

incongruous, persistent,

the image of young salmon in round ponds at the hatchery

across an ocean and a continent, circling

with muscular swiftness—tints of green, pink, blue,

glowing mysteriously through slate gray, under trees

unknown here, whose names I forget because

they were unknown to me too when I was young.

And there on the western edge of America—home to me now,

and calling me with this image of something I love,

yet still unknown—I dream of cathedrals,

of the worn stone of human centuries.

Guarded by lions with blunted muzzles

or griffins verdant with moss, gateposts open in me

to effaced avenues.

Part of me lives under nettle-grown foundations.

Part of me wanders west and west, and has reached

the edge of the mist where salmon wait the day

when something shall lift them and give them to deeper waters.

(Bellagio, November ‘89)