Il Bacio

August —
The first night,
The coming dawn.
Twelve romances thirteen;
The stars blossom.

Look up!
Behold the array,
A universe unfolded before our eyes;
Jupiter, theatrical and majestic, courts
Venus, treasured daughter-in-law.
A stolen, forbidden kiss —
What could be more erotic?
Orbiting the passage of years,
Aligned for an illusory moment,
A trick of the eye.

But we are not the planets,
Nor the stars; we play out 
Not on the scale of the cosmos.
We are but dust,
Written into no myth but our own,
Unfashionable and utterly insignificant observers,
Tracing Greek meaning into arbitrary alignments:
Twelve, thirteen,
Giove, Venere,
Two shooting stars —
Fragments of constellations yet unimagined.

It must all mean something.