In the turbulent career of the patriarch Photius
there can have been few days more glorious
than Saturday March 29th 867.
It was on this day that he delivered his seventeenth sermon.

As in an old memoir, the rhododendrons were over.
Hunger persisted, and the light was weak—
the light of music and books, the light paintings cast

As if encarmined tulips opened
with a sudden pop like that of a toy pistol
morning surprises you again,

Only the dead don’t know
what heaven’s like. For the rest
extrapolation is possible.

Each year the monuments grew larger.
The citizens demanded this.
As their lives got worse they wanted