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Robert Seatter

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The Room of the Model Theatre Sets

for Sebastiano Romano

The end of the century. In your flat
Mimi is still dying again and again, Tosca mounting
the crenellated battlements.

                                       Your Sicilian pupi
are dangling on the wall, the curl of their moustaches
liquorice-black, their mouths’ bright lipstick

unsmudged by kisses. And of course the arrows,
drooping so elegant from your Saint Sebastian’s flesh –
the little statue decorous under the lamplight –
white as a peach and beautiful, I remember,

so beautiful in the dark. In your designer’s model theatre sets
all the paper cut-outs tremble on their sticks,
wave their tiny hands up to the light. You wake

with a start from your long insomnia, show me
the photos of the dead and dying: the razor blade cuts
that sting in the morning, the weight that makes
no space at all. You shout about graffiti on the Milan streets,

all along the train carriages unmoving in their tracks,
the sound of aerosol cans night after night –
                   illegible smears in the unlovely morning.

 

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