Walking back
Walking back once in Venice I noticed
how the buildings curved resisting the urge to straighten
curves too are illusive a more suggestive
order yet an order. A doorway’s
indentation or a window’s invites
our speculation as does every
boundary like this the water’s edge a wood
seen from an adjoining road.
To be within it is a different feeling
closer to unknowing.
Elsewhere Venice straightens opens out to squares
and rectangles bridges the border promenades
narrow waterways while the grander ones
are more riverine conceding to water
its implacable priority to the point
of flooding evidence of man’s designs.
We walked through a sequence
while you spoke of long familiarity
and even of disdain for ancient errors.
Stasis appears to be a theme of this place
which anchored trade and dominions from
its stitched together islands and
accoutrements preyed on by epidemics
curveballs we say now and we would know
subject to odd strictures benefiting older sons
the most marriageable daughters leaving
the rest to fend a condition not
limited to Venice but accentuated there.
Is stasis the rule or is the natural order
to destroy it dynamo of flatten
and rebuild spread wealth so it can
accumulate again? I wander off the
subject whatever it is exactly
curveballs and curving streets
the way a wall of doors and windows
unwraps reveals briefly by chance
or by intent how love seeks
out such streets’ rooms within rooms
and ideally a canal’s distance.
We take our chances with a narrow one
smoothing out its slightest curve
appreciating others how those
forms excite us when we behold
them hold them press our case
our suit bodily with accompaniment
of words lips fingers while she sings
the chorus and the other parts
as if Vivaldi composed for her
another innocent giving voice
in that curving way music goes.
Are there innocents beyond the fall?
Did they abscond or shift the hedges?
We traded knowledge ignored the street
distance imagined a vanishing point
songs composed not transcribed
looked for in memory that hall
past ends disjunctions rifts. Songs
they say are the last things to go.
