Aquarium

Chapter 29: For a Viola-da-gamba

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About This Book

A sequence of vivid lyric poems juxtaposes urban modernity and sensual escapism, shifting between images of aquaria, industrial streets, cathedrals, cabarets and cultivated gardens. Rich sensory detail and decadent diction evoke crowded factories, neon-lit cafés, and intimate interiors while poems alternate social satire, melancholic reverie and pastoral relief. Several pieces use theatrical vignettes and musical rhythms to render characters and scenes indirectly, while others address sacred space, memory and longing through ornate imagery. The book’s structure groups shorter, imagistic poems into two parts that balance urban manners with curving, often erotic or elegiac, meditations.

For a Viola-da-gamba

(To be sung by a Eunuch)

I HAVE known beauty

Of skies at eve

Beneath the shadows

That interweave

The boughs that grieve.

I have known beauty

Of suns that set

With fire of amber

And coronet

Of pearl inlet.

I have known beauty

Of fields at dawn

When April shivers

On gilded corn,

And hope is born.

I have known beauty

Of Summer, Spring,

Nebulous Autumn

Cloud gathering

With frail-poised wing.

I have known beauty—

But none so fair

To match the splendour

Of my love’s hair

And snow limbs bare.