Luke Whitington: ‘A chunk of heaven’

A chunk of heaven
The city emerging felt like St Petersburg’s extension into a better history.
                                  —J. Brodsky

A chunk of heaven dropped to earth
Infinity plunged to its knees in the sea
And here comes the blow-in—for goodness sake, me—
Abashed, lost in Italian, traipsing through
A dreamy melodrama of views, the sky courageous
Drifting on fire, the air drenched
In flavours of seaweed, the sky changing its mind
Dusk falling like a cloak over precipitous architecture
Echoes of footsteps, loss of direction
This is not your home, where are your normal coordinates?

The water now a sliding mirror
For stars and the moonlit structures
Silhouetted line-ups move on, a mood, in measures of eternity
Sleeping domes, fluted chimneys dreaming
Smoke, sleepwalking towers survey
Rooftops, tidemarks of terracotta and
The Canal, unzipped, a curving striptease artist
Shedding turquoise and threads of gold, heading past
Peering palaces, arabesqueing out to…