Venice

James Wright

Crumbling into this world,
Into this world's sea, the green
Sea city decays.
The cats of the early evening,
Scrawny and sly,
Gloat among lengthening shadows of lions,
As the great palladian wings lean toward the water and
  slowly
Fall and fall.
The city of shifting slime ought not to be
In this world.

It ought to drift only
In the mind of someone so desperately
Sick of this world,
That he dreams of himself walking
Under crystal trees,
Feeding the glass
Swans there, swans born
Not in the fragile calcium spun among feathers
But out of the horrifying fire that
A sullen laborer spins
In his frigid hands, just barely, just just barely not wringing
The swan's neck.