It was on a remote sidestreet
off Corso Vittorio, or maybe Piazza 
delle Cinque Lune ‒ what difference
would it make, anyway? ‒ in a cramped,
neglected bookshop, one of the last
of its kind, uncomfortable for browsing.
Heaven-on-earth, in short. And there it was,
the book whose verses would fill my tired days 
with rare delicacy, in its original Greek
with marvellous Italian translations 
on facing pages. Edizioni del Leone, 
Venice, 1993. I’d tote it everywhere
as I roamed the rain-tortured streets
in search of fragments of the kind of love
that swept Kavafis up. I’d scour faces
for chance exchanges in the library,
in a jeweler’s window, in an empty café
near the river, but no one there ever
noticed my looking. I was but a shadow
stalking myself in a mirror, an image
wrought by youth and my own restless mind,
an angel wrested from its silver cloud
pinned down to Earth. I’d fall asleep 
in its pages, under its muslin spell
of languid scholars, youths like marble satyrs,
pre-Christian codes of love. “Slow time,”
as Keats wrote. I wanted slow- 
ness too, fresh from New York City
and its pounding ribcage. Saurian Rome
hadn’t changed much, as I’d come to see it,
from the gold-leaf days of Kavafis’ heady 
lovers, when it was little more than 
a fading empire, its languorous body
stretched out across the Mediterranean 
like a tired courtesan, voluptuous, bursting 
with signs and wonders of a strange new faith.

Late afternoon’s pink light, the orange garden
crowning the Aventine, its iron gates,
a roar of motor-scooters disturbing
the unbreathable air, and time
like a ruined clock stopped
forever in the slow turning 
of sun-dappled pages.