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Lately my vision of the Palace
highlights a love-seeking, love-bestowing orange
tabby whose base is not the vast terraces
or sofas or unequaled rugs, but the top
of an armoire that even the robots

neglect. From which, after sufficient
privacy, he jumps and finds new routes
through corridors and galleries. The girls
on holiday here as long as they wish
make much of him, as do the randomly strolling

artists and writers he meets; invariably
they see in him the genius loci. Cat-boxes
are never far, and promptly cleaned; he knows
where food is, and the swift and clever toys
that crash into frescoes. Eventually

he enters the room where I lie on a couch
and climbs on my chest. And for
some period of what is still called time
that suits us both, he is more
than whatever I was thinking, or the Palace.