for Venezia

My mind has become crowded with Venice

Its streets spoke out through my skull,

(As I'm sure you can see)

Labyrinthing prayers

In passageways shadowed between windowed stonework

Whose terminus is often in water, where echoes die away

I've no gondola to send them on

Past the quiet, past the lattices, past the forgetfulness

Which requires that I retrace

Curves to the square.

Beside me always the hassle, always the hustle,

Wheeling, ranting, raving, colors of cloths

Clever spidering lacemaker's snare,

Piano's plunk across the piazza,

Glint, glance, gilt and gleam of glass,

Multitudes melded to one melancholy Murano, corner to wall:

Trefoil sputtering lamp-lit stare of the lion on the quay.

Gelato is a kind of baptism

For those who would not normally confess;

Walking jeans and gauzy shoulders ply the busy wilderness

In supposed effortless resistance and all the signs suggest

At least you'll show something for what you have seen

Art and its many lucid motives, or madness,

Court and cathedral the mind.

Navigation and negotiation

Designate order of being,

Are displayed like nametags,

Fate experience and the balance of trade in the city of trade.

Between my thumb and forefinger is grasped

My pencil; between a pigeon feather and my wedding ring

The hookah violin's recreational Vivaldi, or

Scent of opera over the dark salt air

Between your thumb and forefinger

The futilely long nose

Of my mask.