With Linnea in the South of France

The wind blew hot today; it blew my skirt—

it whipped my skirt, but not as at Les Baux.

Back then the denim flapped a furious code

into the Val d’Enfer, those craggy

Les Baux-de-Provences

hills, a giant’s rotted teeth.

Linnea stood atop the highest battlement

nearly windborne,

all of fifteen.

The wind blew hot in

Bezier and we slept naked

on the floor, ignorant of scorpions,

me filled with local wine.

We’d spent the day at the menhir

near Minerve, along Canal du Midi.

Arles and Olargues, Sommeil

and Nimes, Aigue Morte—all towns

of consonants and dissonance, all

chalk-white in the southern sun,

so hot the wind,

no fans to be found.

And in St. Remy, where Van Gogh

slept in his madness at the Saint Paul hosptial

and among the Roman

ruins, the wind blew hot.

Mountainous Landscape Behind the Saint-Paul Hospital

As today, before the storm, bringing intimations

of lost time--

Linnea, framed against the dark blue sky.

I think of Eliot, childless, writing “Marina,”

writing what he could not know:

This form, this face, this life.

What images return,

O my daughter.

For the full text of "Marina,"