"ALTHOUGH I FOUND HER THUS, WE DID NOT PART..."
the wind walks
about St. Mark's Square
stooping to ******
this and that man's hat
or slyly lift a lady's skirt
so that she drops
her purse with a curse
before chasing off
some offensive litter
a cat watches the evening
getting entangled in the magic
of a hurdy-gurdy man
who appears
to have stepped out of
a century other than our own
Venice and its passing
procession of pedestrians and cats
barely on the cusp of consciousness
this table I am
seated at is an island
of memory
and I am
shipwrecked
somewhere between
the present and a past
a wave slaps a gondola
as if it had told a ***** joke
about the filthy weather
and what a seagull
had said
I have brought you to Venice
because you have never been
your death has seen to that
one day
as the earth turned
away from the sun
you stepped off
into a greater
unknown
now I say: "See, sister
with my eyes
all the future you have missed
the moon landing
me - grown to be
this man
willing to share the world
with you always
I see the world for two
you shall exist
in the silence between
note and note word and word
puppets dance and laugh
show us ourselves for
whatever we are
all our gaudy follies
or brightly painted
foibles
a moon sits upon
a bridge as if it were
Humpty Dumpty his very self
the puppets now
half in-half out
of their many stickered
packing cases
look as if they
could run away when
the humans
aren't looking or
paying them no mind
even the hurdy-gurdy man
has stepped back into
the century he had come from
rain and a star
falling
falling. . .
*
Although I found her thus, we did not part,
Perchance even dearer in her day of woe
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.
I can repeople with the past,—and of
The present there is still for eye and thought,
And meditation chastened down, enough;
And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
And of the happiest moments which were wrought
Within the web of my existence, some
From thee, fair Venice! have their colors caught;
There are some feelings time cannot benumb,
Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.
The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray
And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal *******, by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.
Lord Byron - (From Childe Harold’s Pilgr