The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

if the stairs are withdrawn

Turkey Villas

      At night I sometimes see

      those wooden villas

      as if they were shacks

      caught in an avalanche

      and I crossing the Alps

      Or

      to make a shorter story

      and relate in truth

      to my life

      as if it were San Francisco

      1937

      and a waterfront strike

      the houses on the hills

      were wooden and grey

      tilted

      Those ordinary houses

      in which a few people

      preserved the art

      of pipe playing … A.D.

      It is a vast smooth dream

      this uncrippled Bosphorus

      I don’t like to consider

      what goes on at the bottom

      or the galleons and risks

      that plunged

      as ever so often a canoe

      It is a shade

      a window shade also

      one that can be drawn if the

      curtain is working

      like a vat of oil

      Now to be a proper historian

      of my dreams

      I must relate

      the sidereal action

      Of a ship seen from

      A Hotel Hilton balcony

      Think of that

      Balcon Hilton!

      Enough of this dizziness

      let us apply the oars

      Not to freeze

      in a mosaic

      not to be fooled

      by a Mosque

      What an idea!

      I am spinning with ideas

      to the top of the Mosque

      I am an ice cream cone

      Muzzein

      I am drenched

      with Blue

      Fevered with ideas

      I heat them in my pocket

      these beads of ideas