The Mediterranean Sea

The monstrous sapphire
            lies in her lavish dowry
Crowned by Casinos
set with Provençal
olives
and spears to the mistral

The prevalent Fair
draws idle tides
over volcanic privacies
frilled with the rouse and hush of drowsing foam

Jewelled on her Adriatic arm
Venice, sarcophagus of sighs
and ghostly merchandise,
Splinters on the opal angle of the sun
and dies to the Angelus
an over purpled peach
swarmed by the flies of dusk

From the green incline
of vengence
the Vesuvian vine
drips lucently
Lacrimae Christi
to drift     imperceptibly
with the lost sob of Shelley

Hewn in the Apuane
Carrara stands
as marble sentinel
beyond the blazing rust
of branches
roofing amphibian babies

as they rise
from the Ligurian gullies
Their polished thighs
armoured with aqueous ashes
of the tinselled sands.