Venice

Caught between sirocco and bora,
My mind sinks as the flood rises.
The seahorse on the gondola’s side
Leads me like a totem.
Time sports
Like a masked Carnival stiltwalker,
Racing around the streets,
Bestriding the canals,
Putting the evil eye on the Lilliputians below.
All I have is words,
The glassblower breathing into his creation,
Infusing it with his soul.

Venice in late autumn:
Sun bleeding through early morning mist,
Reminding you of everything
Beautiful, lost.
I am here among the chimeras,
The dominoed figures in Guardi’s pictures,
Dancing at the carnival of the dead.
Grotesque carved heads stare down at you from buildings,
Eyes following wherever you go:
Giants, crones, Amazons, monsters,
Hedonists winking lewdly at some scabrous gag.

The architect’s lyre
Conjures stones into position,
In accordance with the laws of the universe.
Everything is in its place,
The square, the circle and the cross,
Blessed by the number, Six.

In me both Titian and Tintoretto,
Devout in the world, caressing the opulence divine,
Supping from an onyx chalice.
In me the spoils of Constantinople, and of Heaven.
Always this melancholy sensuality,
Voluptuous void of blasé enchantments.

The nuns of San Zaccaria, in silks and satins,
Shamelessly entertained lovers,
Danced all night to trumpets and fifes,
And fought off officials sent to close their parlour
With a barrage of sticks and stones.
The priest-confessor of the Convertite convent,
Treated the four hundred nuns as his seraglio,
Arranging naked bathing parties for the novices,
And taking the prettiest into his bed,
Torturing any who would not submit.

Coruscations of light reflected from water
On the underside of bridges,
Flickering undulating patterns
Of light and shade,
Sibilant dialect of light.

Pietro Aretino earns a good living
From outrageous flattery and pitiless satire,
Attacking only those who could do him no harm,
Especially the loose wives of minor patricians,
And the rulers of other states ;
He surveys the scene, smacking his lips,
Decrying the wanton lechery all around.

On the Ponte di Santa Fosca,
Fra Paolo Scarpi was ambushed one night,
Stabbed and left for dead by Papal assassins,
For condemning the Vatican’s territorial ambitions
And defying its interdicts.
He showed that a man could love God
While opposing His Church;
The scalpel and the telescope
Fit his hand as truly as the chalice.

The light, full of reflections,
Inflections of a phantom lingua franca…
Makes the solid insubstantial,
Phantasmal, fantastical,
Silks, satins, brocades and damasks,
And the skull beneath the carnival mask.

In the church of San Zaccaria,
Look up at the Bellini altarpiece midway up the nave,
When the sun is high in the afternoon,
And a single ray enters
Through the clerestory windows across the nave
And, as it moves picks out each of the vivid robes
Of the saints and the Madonna in turn,
The colours igniting in succession.

Carpaccio’s Saint George Fighting the Dragon,
Commissioned by the Dalmatian brothers,
Glows in the Scuola’s gloom:
Fantastic colours of a Libya the artist had never seen,
The buildings in the background
Copied from woodblock prints,
And the desert strewn with dismembered bodies,
Animal skulls and lizards,
While St George spears the winged dragon through the mouth,
And the watching princess clasps her hands in gratitude.

After dark I stroll the calli and campi,
Footsteps ring on damp stones,
Nearing and fading,
Hushed by water’s susurration,
And the plash of a gondola’s oar somewhere.
Silhouetted bridges loom,
Light falls in hints from rooms above…
Kinesis is my vocation,
Moving, swirling, doubling back on myself,
Meeting the same thing again and again,
In a different mood, a different mode,
In the land of shapeshifters,
Making eerie music…