CASSANDRA

No one believes what I say,

no one. When I speak, they

just laugh, talk about weather, or idly

watch pigeons on the square, pecking,

cooing for a mate. No one believes

anything I say. Children hang back,

tossing stones, how they treated old Cézanne.

When dusk absolves the leaves of olive trees,

stones on the city wall incline toward history.

Herdsmen number their returning sheep, the bars

breathe out tobacco smoke, but no one,

no one believes me. They chatter on

about that crash long ago, seen on TV,

the playboy making off with the wife of that oil tycoon,

sex scandals, eau de cologne, cauliflowers, Edward Said.

Fingering the past like a precious photo album,

no one believes what I say.

Night cloaks with an armor no arrow can pierce.

Neither rain nor flood lashes our shores.

The cinema unspools that sinking

seventy years ago. As I said

on another occasion, or maybe in a poem,

we need only a box office, someplace

to trade banknotes for tears. Neither hope

nor fear. The shadow of a carousel horse

crouches silent in the flowerbed,

archaic prophet.