I: Aeneas, Driven and Vitiated by the Bitterness of Juno, Begins his Descent Fin de Siecle

Where is the beauty I was promised?
Has it died too? A flower too delicate for looking?
It died of touch, too much like you,
a poet who insists on being frail,

and now there's only fragrance,
urging us to sail,
a fleeting odour drawing us
reluctantly through water,
across the shadow line and into darkness
to where we enter, all bejewelled,
in shapes by Moreau, oils by Klimt,
and Virgil is our guide,
as wearily we put to port again, again,
and feel in that fifth book the subtle strain
of the mind's unanchored siren music
and the boat's unyielding weight
and the sand's throat grate against the hull.
Ah rest bruised backs and buttocks here
upon the soft breast of the moss-hemmed beach
where headlands send out hard enfolding arms,
away from traffic, strife, and all alarms,
far far from the cold sea's slow consuming reach.