…a vista of silent squares, peopled by shadows
and statues, bounded by distant horizons….
           --Gordon Onslow Ford

i.

The train whistles
and chuffs into the station: ghosts
disembark, drifting
like thin brushstrokes of yellow
ochre. The square
fills, then empties into nine dark
arcades, down nine
cold passageways where everything
waits against light,
against the green air of Turin.

ii.

Two are left,
as if they had found a way out
of the labyrinth
and back to the garden.

They discover
two things: they speak the same
language,
they will become lovers.

Initiates of a new
order, they face each other,
Theseus and Ariadne,
David and Bathsheba, and embrace

the prophecy
of comings and goings, dark
and light, Judas
kissing Christ, Goodness itself

winding the ball
of string, stepping out of carnage
into a square,
into the mouth of God.

iii.

They know now
mouth to mouth is God's idea
of intimacy, His
in-breathing of Adam, the way He
consumed Moses,
then spit him out and sent him
like a torch
down the mountain. They know
Judas' kiss
was all slap and no kiss, not close
or consummate;
this is how Lucifer, highest
of angels, brightest
of beings, turned and kissed God
good-bye. The same
mix of love — conjugal, prodigal.