Seen by chance from tenemented avenues
below the Acropolis rock,
this idea carved in marble springs to mind
sparkling in the sun.
It remains, surviving the closing of eyes
through a hundred generations,
is by now a template for the eyes,
yet still startles every glance.
French cathedrals lift like eagles from the ground.
Houses cantilevered over brooks are
as stately in suspension as the very words:
Frank
Lloyd
Wright.
But nothing is like this.
Here there are no banquet halls,
no ovens, beds, toilets,
not even waiting rooms.
To covet this promises no ease or status:
it is not property.
I clutch at greed
by refusing to pilfer here,
by agreeing not to pocket any fragment;
for my spectacular theft
is what I carry away
each time I close my eyes,
having seen the Parthenon
again for the very first time.
1995
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