A diversion between Curzio Malaparte’s ‘Ancora Troppo Cielo’
and Virgil’s ‘Eclogue IV’


I.
Who’d have thought the horizon is just the edge
of a face mask? Who’d have thought that a coppice
wood could do the police in different birds?
Time to essay up fresh voice again for this
age now is so far from golden and closer
to pangolin – most widely trafficked creature
and viral host to humans. A pangolin’s
tongue is rooted in its pelvis and so long
it keeps it rolled up in a mouth-pouch that is
like an internal mask. The Sibyls avoid
pangolins, and Marianne Moore was right about
them: we can only approach them with syllables.
       My daughter says no, the age we are in is
actually six, and why be the film’s heroine
...