Here where the various Venuses gather
—you know the types: one kind
posing with a dolphin or a scallop shell,
another gyring to look at her behind,
another a more modest bather,
crossing her arms—a church bell
coincides with the approach of sirens,
pitting emergency against eternity;
and the sand is cinders and glitter,
the source of which everyone can see
towering over the environs:
the volcano, that arch-depositor
of new earth over old. As if a sapphire
beckoned with an aquamarine finger,
one wave and the Venus undoing her sandal
leaps up, on the beach of hot clinker,
walking barefoot to a blue that will suspire
into the sky with a hiss of scandal.
As if the sand weren’t hot enough,
the city streets are paved with lava flags,
and as if a volcano did not suffice,
fireworks branch like cave-paint stags
jumping in brief bursts above the roof,
almost nightly, fizzling out in paradise.