Frescoes Underground Barely painted, anonymous, these saints merely beam from their haloes like old egg yolks making their peace with white. Stone overpowers sound too. The air, though cool, is inert. This is what Dante meant, the paralysis that sets in, especially above ground where we trifle with brick and play with rock, running a finger erotically across a marble vein. The saints still gesture, though without pressure.
Street level is above eye-level now.
I feel like a pimpernel seen once from an ambulatory. Then hairline cracks mapping their faces, like veins in an old woman's thighs, secure their kinship with earth. The little bird outpaced the bigger bird and it seemed for a minute it would turn and attack. But summer was well under way and aerials reclaimed the airspace. Terra cotta softens balconies' iron.