Ginsberg’s Howl

Splendid Labyrinth of Commerce

I

I have seen the season’s best styles pausing on the bridges, posing – thrilled by or oblivious of the masses, who stopped in their tracks, who spilled from the calle into the campo, stupefied with anchorless beauty

Who ate pasta and drank spritz or ombra, braving the local dishes for the camera in the osterias, the gelaterias, bacarias

Who lay in the gondolas and listened to love songs passed from voice to voice across the glimmering refuse, admiring the balance and grace of gondolier bodies in summer, singing and spooning the water, calling, not thinking of the gathering of wits required for the rest of a lean damp year

Who stumbled into the churches, blinded, where children played with opposable thumbs games glowing in cupped hands and parents hurried through tri-lingual floor-plans, peering, taking furtive photographs

Who stared and wondered   -  at the ghosts and the remains and at those who lived their too familiar daily lives surrounded by overwhelming splendour

Who strolled out at midday when brioche and coffee begin to curl as wine and basil about the Corte de Millon, where perfect swordfish will be served before the theatres open

Who were lost in the silence left by the porters’ ‘attenzione!’, retreating seeking consolation for those who will never be  Tiziano, Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Lombardo, who are dead yet more alive than these will ever be

who came belated  and must sit in the campos and paint beautiful watercolours, but never quite enough for saints – paint only their buildings not the saints themselves, no halos now, but those of steaming pavements and miasmic evenings, which must sustain pulchritude enough for grey habitual winters and not only between Epiphany and Lent, hollow as the relic altar, seek a holiday from self behind the masks

of glossy papier-mâché, eyeless in the windows promising heroism, glamour or failing that,  thrilling faceless encounters for a camera against despair:

the long-nosed Plague Doctor and horror imperfectly averted

the smiling Cats and nights agonised with howling

Hunger and Greed, the mocking comedy cast of original ruin; the soul exiled to the face

And last, the Devil’s unheeded warning, laughing: all, all casino now.

II

What petrified mud-coated, inverted, submerged forest holds breathlessly this stone fairy-tale  in the deafening light?

Santa Maria! Solitude! Sorrow! Grace!

Child-mother, so exposed with your ancient baby at your naked breast,

Santa Maria! Whom no-one thought to protect , but painted you graven, inhuman and left you to the clamouring petitions,

Santa Maria, the constant tiny needling flames begging for things you could not give –  trapped in stone, in gilt paint,

Santa Maria, when now and then a miracle broke through – they took you from the garden and put you in cold marble where petitions falter, Santa Maria, without Wisteria, unheard beneath

the million shuffling feet of pilgrims without faith.

Touch is forbidden, Santa Maria, but do eyes burn as candles did?

Experience is a jaded miracle, chased everywhere Santa Maria

Formosa; della Salute; del Gigilio; Gloria dei Frari; dei Miracoli; dell’Orto

 

Everywhere, everywhere people come and go, come and go, come and go

III

Not all is sold, sold, sold to the highest bidder.

Though sold this door to the East; this confusion of palace and cathedral;

sold holiness for splendour;

sold the golden glory of God for winking cupolas visible across the rival sea -

selling still glimpses of magnificent Byzantium.

All the gold-leaf of the world cannot cover the bloody riot, rape, rapacity -  bloodlust of Crusaders astray – singing drunk with death as the burning city fades and they return to this serene city for sale.

Still still still

selling forgiveness for the sight of stolen relics

now only in gold-rimmed postcards – soiled redemption of ersatz experience:

pauses for snapshots of that exquisite bridge haunted by unheard despair

collected merely against the ruin of an everyday sold in turn for this.

 

IV

To be in this city at tourist time,

(where history is bartered imported plundered rarely made

where Eros spreading like an oil stain infects indolence

where cracked well-curbs rise from the stone dry, dry, dry as dust too hot to touch –

no children laughing in gardens, no amethysts in mud)

is to see only the relentless commerce in the market places, on the bridges, in the schools, the campos and the churches, and the churches . . .

Until the gondolier-uniforms lying like broken dolls in shop windows under the Rialto reveal

another city without gloss:

on the Campo San Stefano,

the bag-sellers, turn musicians and make impossible promises

without dough in Campo San Maurizio

Vivaldi spills endlessly into the night beyond the ticket lines

without bread on the Campo San Barnaba

feet cool with swimming fruit and darting fish

without silver on Campo San Margerhita

a rabbit hops coniglio on my daughter’s pages

without cash in the Rio Tera degli Aassassini

ice-cream drips from dark street tables,

in the Calle Toletta the smallest stone lion stands absurdly fierce;

at last in the Rio Terra Colonne, the storm waits to relieve the strange sticky words

uncouth on tongues learning to sing,

finding the tiny double-knotted dragon in a lost  sotoportego.

And, east of the city, smelling the earth again to see ancient couples holding hands

as sparrows flit uccelli in a piebald shade;

chatter with exuberant joy in crumbs and dripping taps.

 

~ by Reason plays no part on November 21, 2010.