Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

Giorgio de Chirico, 1914

1.
That shadow-girl running with the hoop, her name is Cassandra, not Cassie.  Yesterday it was Tarantula. The day before, it was Melisma. I ask the name of her hoop and she says, That’s stupid. Certainly not, I tell her. Everything has a secret name. Your hoop tells me it’s secret name is Armalo the One-Armed. That’s even more stupid, she says. Don’t tell her: History is a one-armed hoop. And the stick the shadow-girl uses to turn the hoop. And the shadow-girl herself. And the fool who loves to watch her hoop roll where a rolling hoop will roll.

2.
No one wants to talk about that empty horse trailer. Or why the trailer doors swing open. Or why no one wants to talk. Forgetting is the ether that lets the rain fall without getting hurt, says Ariana. Ariana, the pharmacist-philosopher, who says, The morality of the wind clings to the yellow dust like yellow dust.

3.
That shadow in the distance, just off the piazza. You’re wondering why. Why I’ve been ignoring it. Some say it’s the shadow of a forgotten statue of a forgotten god’s memory lapse. Others claim it’s the essence of Maximo, the spoon collector. His shadow left him one night, without a word, as he smoked his cheap cigar in the piazza, and it has yet to return. As Ariana might say, a toad spawned from lead cannot swallow a toad spawned from fire.