It was otherworldly. You’d have been rapturous:

lightning over the temples \ wine-dark sky—

no one in that drenched expanse but us

unless you call the thunder a god’s voice.

We were soaked completely through, the girls and I.

Even without the storm, you’d have been rapturous,

showing your girls your most beloved place (

that’s how I billed it; it’s why they came with me)

from our honeymoon travels. No one but us.

But you’d hate the new confinement to the grass.

Back then, we wandered each antiquity;

there’s a whole roll of photographs: me, rapturous,

posed at column after column, my face

a likeness of its likeness in your eye.

Of course, it wasn’t really only us.

Our girls—you should see them; they’re rapturous—

were there as pure desire, standing by,

just as you, pre-disaster, pre-psychosis,

came briefly back in those drenched ruins to us.