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 sea.

You stop near a lamppost and watch
The long pendant of light
Slanting, wavering down through water
The city palaces have another life
Their darker twins mirroring
Golden facades above, swirling beside—
Frowning, stooping marble architraves advancing
Stern arches, cartwheeling, ranked, intent towards water.

Ancient history drifts over blazing waters
Then the show goes out, late walkers
Striding alone, metronomes of steps in narrow alleys
High tide barely whispering, a slow languid
Lapping—you stop again under a Romeo and Juliet balcony
It’s all the same, the old abandoned stage
Why do you return? The view will never be new
It is serenely the same, everything here
From monument to paving stone, waits
To be seen again. Is there a motive undiscovered—
Why frequent, why haunt this place? You walk on

Into another piazza, who determines why Venice in winter
Is somehow better? Unless you love deserted, breezy piazzas?
Ah—here is the pedestal with Niccolo’ Tommaseo
Perched up there on his pile of books
A good burger, our book-farter
“Cagalibri”—the locals of these parts
Have called him—A far cry from the lions
And noble, heraldic bronzes
Rising into view in or around St Mark’s.
You find the few bare trees comforting
Looking like strayed pilgrims
Not quite sure why they are in the piazza.

Under lamps attached to walls
The ongoing stones throw a pattern
A mortared hopscotch into the next moment
In a dark passage through an arch—no
It wasn’t a ghost, just blinking green eyes of a cat
And the water sliding sounds, everyway and back
As the solitary exploration progresses—under windows
Where the tinkling of knives, glasses, forks goes on
Families’ robust, wine-fed, clatter-fed conversations
Other dimensions, tables of laughter, hovering above your head.

Keys in your hand, rising on the carpeted steps
To your room upstairs, you reflect on Brodsky
Who made this Pensione, in the Accademia, his winter pilgrimage
And wrote in those rooms overlooking the canal—
Such little risk or cost involved, you whisper, in using his old room
You might often dally with poetry, but you are a part-time exile
And you have not been forced to leave, ever, country
Old friends, your lover—and your father and mother, forever.

His ghost will not guide your hand or your pensive nib.
You look down over the vagrant mist
Wandering along the Canal—will you ever know
Why you always come back—
It’s not just a lovely desolation
Marooned relics of abandoned beauty—
The moon is full and will not talk
The sombre towers and domes have other fates
To work with—the yellow light from lamps
Continues to scrutinize

The blue and green ooze
Of millennia—home is usually where the heart is
Or in this case, the pasta, or where wine-fed talk flows
But face it, poetry brought you here
And poetry has found a home here—
And Brodsky and others may be responsible
For all your hunger; this hunger here is another thing—
Feelings amongst thoughts moving through murmurings
Of memories’ lists, of notes of quotidian things—a dormant line
Of verse—is still looking for the right place
The right doorway—the right doorstep, where it might fall.

Luke Whitington