literature

Words from Venice

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Literature Text

Words from Venice

"La vita non è la morte
e la morte non è la vita.
La canzone l'è già finita."*

I.
In the morning, las turistas flock to the Rialto,
fresh from the cruise ships, "Let's do Venice in a day."
The crowds thicken and clot like fluid in the spine,
the bridge's white archways forever held
as the backbone of the city.
The light from the Grand Canal dances on the aged ceiling,
Weaving, pulsing, lifeblood in silver.
It is barely ten, and Venice is already sinking,
her backbone strained beneath hoards of foreign feet.

Nothing is ever still, child.
Your fingers have their own pulse,
If you listen. If you feel.

City of Glass, I wish my bones were part of yours.
She wakes, unaware that those who love her
are not of her
Her Venetian natives pushed to the outskirts,
And I am one of the crowd.
I wish to keep my pulse my own.
Tang of salt across my tongue,
Stones born of Renaissance hands against my palms,
Throb of Italian sun beneath my eyelids.
You are mine, yet not mine.
Venice is new for me, but the fresh sight is shared.

II.
Midday gondoliers leap from their boats
packed against the docks like string beans colored crimson
and black. Rush of fire, hot-blooded in the sun,
the Piazza is the only place in my world
where human speech drowns the ever present
drone of traffic.
San Marco's drawing room smells of pigeons
and raised voices.
The lagoon stretches like a smile toward the horizon,
glinting on the crushed glass between the cobbled stones.

Time is, time was.
Your Evangelist with his marble wings
Treads on land bred of the sons of Aeneas.
Crystalline skyline of marble and blood
you have changed your heartbeat,
Pagan feet with your thoughts divine.

Rush of bodies, press in—narrow streets,
the calli that burst into the square.
Strangers flood the open space
like aqua alta.


III.
The earth spins, the sea creeps in quietly
Night on the lagoon whispers to me in the dark.
The red-brick face of the Campanile
Turns to embers from the lights of the gondolas
Ever a lighthouse, a beacon against the invading sea.
The rhythmic pull of sea against oar
is like a lullaby.
The salt-sweat and warm night air
fade into the steam that rises from the waves.
The sea spills in and back.
The city's breathing slows as the waves calm,
The Grand Canal sighs in time with the tide.

Hush. Hush. Hush.









* "Life is not death,
and death is not life,
the song is already finished."
~ Italian lullaby
Wow, it's been a while!

This is my final project for AP Literature--a two plus page meditative lyric poem on a famous city. I chose Venice because I have always wanted to go there.

Anyway, notes on the italian phrases:

Las turistas: the tourists
calli: small alleyways
aqua alta: the colloquial term for the water that's creeping up on Venice and threatening to sink it--means "tall water"

And there should be a note for the epigraph, which is from an italian nursery rhyme, "Lullaby at Twenty Past Seven"

Again, this was easier to read when I could indent things and add italics.
© 2011 - 2024 Bkkprgirl
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