marbled rivulets

in the muddied alleyway

where the young boy played

beyond the parapets and balustrades

with globs of new fallen rain

and grimy slush and dreamed of

Marco Polo

SORROWS

Writing as Reverie,

Nick Piombino, The Boundary of Blur,

New York, Roof

Books, 1993: “Play

conceived as the

manipulation of

reminders, an

accumulation of

fragments, passes

through coherence

into speculative

fantasy. The

argument runs

like this: a

child, pausing

before his books,

falls into a

reverie. This

daydream,

composed in part

of excessive

thinking about

power and

mastery and a

concurrent, if

hidden and

counterpointed,

theme of loss,

an anticipated,

almost yearned-

for loss, becomes

equated with a

particular visit

to the ocean on

an overcast day.

The objects

employed in his

fantasy are

transposed

harmonically and

modally into its

emotional

leitmotifs. the

visual complements

the emotional sense

but cannot surpass

it. The child is not

exhaustively

reading the

seascape. His

eidetic memory

is fastened to

the concepts

preceding it.”