Cappuccino at the Marconi Hotel in Venice

It's not the preservation you come for,

not the unadulterated, not the chandelier

that perfectly dodged the carnage,

not the thing that survives intact:

the lace-like facade, or the Byzantine

Madonna with the fresh tear

on her cheek. It's the resistance,

the stubbornness of decay, not

the invulnerability, but the reluctance,

the slow peel and flake,

the grudging way the stone passes

into odors and fogs.

It's the ages it takes the algae

to map the canal, and how deep

the mussels sink their hooks

before a single piling shudders.

Some places are more like living in a body

than others, and this may be

one of the best things left:

to sit outside the Marconi Hotel

with your cappuccino and knowledge of death,

and drink it slowly,

and watch the rocking blades

of the parked gondolas, and the wind

threading the arch of the Rialto Bridge,

making time pay for every inch

it takes, a wage of human beauty,

a coin of bristling water.

Structure

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