Otranto

At sunset from the top of the stair watching the castle mallets wrenched from their socket fell from ambush into flame flew into hiding; above the stoneware a latch like muscle hid the green; he stood waist high under the rapt ceiling and hanged the sparrow; where the kitchen had been a mirror of eggs served in a tumbler he saw the ring when a lancet pierced and threw it. In a basket and lowered it where sails enter the harbor over a parchment like dominoes; the petrel-like eyelash. To the sun and its rites were pulled the dried banners; they flew past the ruins the tower and window where ivory guided the mist on his back; he rubbed his eyes and counted them kneeling wrinkled as grass. A ghost in their nostrils put a heel at their forehead; they saw only the moon as it fasted. II If the ship meant anything if he heard a world view in the midst of his rhythm or the spell lustrous like hair on his arm; that groaned as it struck near the tumble down or combing hair; words burnt as they quickened. The bitter they share crept into forage and muster is in their skin; the grey worked like a vise they brushed this to turn arrows; they shut off the vast cellar and the turret leaped to a pattern; the mosaic blended was untouched. III The frankish hills and hummocks metered the greed over sun and cloud; voluptuous in the straits turbanned held scarves to the water each sail embroidered; who washed in their music a lattice. A major or borrowed sky this aspect provides the lily stalk inside the frame; a gesture the lily pointing north as if the wrench from sky decides cold rain or change of tide; the lily she chooses. IV Waking in must the high pierced window dew on the furnaced bar the poaching hour the cup takes smoke from the tower; they drink in the smoke the print cradled; cut in dark. The siege made cloth a transfer learned from invaders who craved it; spindle thieves. She sang high notes and pebbles went into her work where it changed into marks; in that room the armor-like wrens: rites turned with thread a dower begs lapis; eglantine on a spoon; the castle breeds tallow. V A change of tide might delay the run they watched as if by simple water; read magisterially whatever the book decided; night outside covered with filmic screen ghosts they store; then bring an experimental wheel out of hiding. Even the Nile wind; fortune cards jugglers a remedy from old clothes; to appease the fable—pearls rolling in straw. The way a cowslip bends they remember or Troilus as he stared; they agree on brighter covers; looser shifts fluent tower to tower. More ephemeral than roundness or the grown pear tree connected with vision a rose briar. VI There was only a rugged footpath above the indifferent straits and a shelf where the castle lay perhaps it was sphered like Otranto; there the traveller stood naked and talked aloud or found a lily and thought a sword; or dragged a carcass upon blunt stone like a corded animal. In weeds in spiritual seclusion a felt hand lifted.