Sing my song of forgetting,
Of lips never wrong, never upsetting,
Sing the wine-infused air along,
From the violin’s grapevine song,
Purely gifted as the altar wine and alms
Of the Santa Maria della Visitazione,
A cadenza from the catgut of stringed waves,
The vibrato in polyphonic staves across the lagoon,
Amid the psaltery sway of submerged algae plumes,
Like the strident tails of the horses of Neptune,
Or the teardrop-surge of the glass chandeliers of Murano,
The same powdered hue of Venetian sky,
As bluebirds fallen into their own drowned tune,
As absence awash over the sun-scattered tombs of Olympus.
Sing with a felt-tipped tongue,
So my song of forgetting is never undone.
The Santa Maria della Visitazione or della Pietà is known as the Church of Vivaldi. In reality, it was completed several decades after his death. The Venetian-born Vivaldi actually taught and composed his major works at an orphanage known as the Ospedale della Pietà.
