Watching Water Wrackets

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Fat lads with sea-shrivelled willies, a turtle,
Rivers of curious numbers, the usual dog
Latin (postea vero quisque) — all hurtle
Out of a picture drowning in memories, a huge log-
Jam of obsessions: welcome to a Greenaway flaunt
Entitled ‘Watching Water’.  And where should he hold
Such an acqueous orgy but in my most-belovèd haunt,
The Palazzo Fortuny?  Venice and its tourism, bold
Young ladies pert amidst tempests, lapidary men
Called George flung lagoon- and sky-ward: they flow
Through that house as if a secret tap were open,
Perhaps the one in a room they never show.
An encounter, then, I just really could not miss;
But, for Pete’s sake, is somebody taking the piss...?

(26.3.94)

Future Past

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It could be a face from a distant year N
Thousand: some scathing Schwarzenegger clone,
A super-cool, super-steel android hulk with a yen
For plastic violence.  OK, say this is erron-
eous: perhaps some abstract construct — planes
Of anger scything hurled volumes.  In any 
Case, it is faux Fascist, colonising domains
Stamped ‘Force’, ‘Tomorrow’, ‘World’ and two-a-penny
Slogans of that ilk.  But it’s a toy out of gear, 
The lines limp, the colours dull-drab hues
Of blue-black and mud-red on a ground
Of soiled yellow.  The failure is in the year:
1958.  It’s old news,
Hankering after a Futurism never very profound.

(22.3.94)

A Chinese Scroll

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In the top right-hand corner, descending
Cross-slashes and canted squiggles announce
A different meaning, one that the uncomprehending
Westerner might view askance, denounce
As quaint chinoiserie, but which, of course,
In the light of cultural relativism, must
Be accepted as equally valid.  And so, perforce,
The jaded occidental mind, distrust
Put aside for now, juggles with a new
Perspective.  Craggy rocks high in mist,
The long dark triangles of the bamboo plant
Scattering clouds of diagonals, meandered through
By the dusty path’s slow zig-zag.  Enlist
The mandarin’s eye: give beauty another slant.

(22.3.94)

Javan Batik

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“Batik?” “Tidak.”  Snootily we fanned the pitch
Away in the thick hot sponge of air
That was Jalan Malioboro: a steaming, rich
Soup of Asia, Yogya’s thoroughfare — 
And the very heart of Java.  Not that we weren’t led
By the nose.  We went to see the ‘closing days’
Of the ‘government students’ show; naïvely said
Which were the pick of the lot, gave our praise,
And only smelt a rat when our choices were hung
Barring the door.  A trap, with sickly-sweet tea
As part of the bait.  We parried, finally, with a tongue-
in-cheek offer, an insult of a price.  He
Then it was who was forced to say: “Tidak — no.”
Outside, we savoured the crowds’ jumbled flow.

(16.3.94)

Icon

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Light.  Holy Mother of God, head
Showered in gold.  Light.  Holy Mother
Of God, swathed in rich folds, red,
Ripe as blood.  Light, thrice hallowed.  Another
Look, and the humble faithful reap through grace
A vision of the shining Son.  But when I scan
From the hem of her robe, stiff-plied and piled, in place
Of effulgence there is only reflection.  I can
Read the image: a shrouded fifth colour of gilt,
Byzantine, stylised, a recondite architectonic.
It’s a shallow version, though, sheepishly built
On two-dimensional surfaces, a sardonic
Best guess.  I analyse as a beast ruminates;
They understand whom the Icon first illuminates.

(16.3.94)

Grazie, Thank You

Great Jove, who once with thundering, rolling clouds
Royally stepped down from heaven to earth
And amazed the peoples as they huddled together in crowds,
Zero is, for all his wonder and worth,
In our eyes when we contemplate your gift:
Exquisite, refined and generous — all these and more.
To do it and our feelings justice, our minds shift
Hopelessly: where are the words that will soar
And compel the empyrean’s denizens to hymn
Noble utensils, objects and accoutrements?
Knowing not, at first, our hearts sank — to
You we owed verbal pearls.  Though slim,
Our final, feeble choices at least make sense:
Unadorned and ordinary, they’re ‘Grazie’ and ‘Thank you.’

(31.1.93)

Monteverdi's Flowers

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Behold the Blessed Virgin, immaculate
In Titian’s wreaths of lilac, violet and rose,
A spring bloom of culture.  But however great
The mighty Assumption, however bold or beautiful, to suppose
We’d entered for this were wrong.  We came that way
Thanks to a different art: music.  Not notes,
Though there was an organ which began to play
The rite while we harvested masterpieces, our coats
Wetting the stones as an aftermath of the rainy day
Outside.  Not a mass, but a body — one our throats
Tightened at: Monteverdi, buried in his second 
City.  Though barred from us, you honoured him willy-nilly
With poor, cut flowers.  O words, grow fecund:
Sing of this winter blossom, my perfect lily.

(23.8.92)

The Seasoning

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For us Vivaldi seems the epitome of beauty,
Order and civilised taste.  The measured tread 
Of his chords, the pat sequences with their duti-
ful resolution all bespeak more head
Than heart.  But there’s another side, hidden
(In true Carnival fashion) by this perfect mask.
The wild, violinistic frenzies which rocket unbidden
From those same textures, the pyrotechnics which ask
No permission for their sheer, physical joy
In music-making, these surely are born
Of a raging fire that belies our image of a coy,
Cold priest.  This I love: torn
Between crude invention and over-prim reasoning
He showed how one was improved with the other’s seasoning.

(1992)

Invisible Citizen

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To reach the famous scene the couple had passed
Through the whole city.  They had walked around squares
Full of bold flags and harlequin acrobats; cast
Quick glances at the Syrian merchant’s wares
— Toledan steel, porphyry jugs and myrrh;
Had halted — just for a moment — deftly to frame
The old palace with the heraldic monuments that were
Odd, but apt; they’d crossed the bridge whose name
Means ‘Singular Innocence’, and arrived at the bank
Of the river.  There they stood, in rapt fervour,
Pondering.  “Look,” the man said, his gaze
Lowered, “le alghe.”  With a smile, she saw the lank
Waving fronds.  Opposite, the bald observer
Noted it all, then turned to the streets’ loved maze.

(5.10.92)

La Tempesta

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Once upon a time, I wrote a tale 
Full of adventure, melancholy, obsession and yearning.
Among the imperilled monuments a male
Of our species — a boy in life, though ancient in learning —
Experienced Venice.  Each day he did his duty:
St. Mark’s, its square, and all the Academy’s glory;
Each day he suffered exquisite blows of beauty.
More shocking, though, to him and to my story,
Was the effect of his lodging: an old palazzo, now
A hostel, with cracked and fading frescoes — but above
All with two gorgeous women.  There he saw how
Really men are blown away — hurt, not by art, but by love.
A fable; we share with it only a stormy rain
Which fell unceasingly.  You gave me joy, not pain.

(2.5.92)

Speaking Of Venice

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Let’s talk Goldoni.  Long after he had left his birth-
Place, as a bitter old man in exile, he wrote
His life story.  Knowing well the worth
Of a land he had lost, all he could do was dote 
On it.  “This city is like nothing on earth;
Every time that I saw it again” — and I quote — 
“Was a new surprise to me.”  Today, too,
These interlocking labyrinths of canal and street
Can leave us mute.  Humbled by loveliness, who
Does not shamble, or walk with leaden feet,
Gawping lugubriously?  But better to do
Justice to this beauty, we should leap to greet
La Serenissima in Carlo’s tongue:
A liquid language, not so much spoken, as sung.

(1992)

Walks With L.

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On reflection, I imagined Him as a dapper old gent
Poised elegantly with a brass-tipped ebony cane,
Pausing to contemplate another jewel as He went
Over His well-trod itineraries again,
Those serpentine roads through the city’s art and past
That He revealed in the opus ‘Venice and its Lagoon.’
And who the hell is ‘He’?  — Lorenzetti, the mast-
er-guide of my purgatory there.  Discovering the boon
Of that book half-redeemed me: it gave
Me a world, a personal map, an articulate love.
And so, mirroring this, I returned with Her
(With you) to look in the back-streets for a brave
Way forward; and found one — thanks be to heaven above — 
Confronting the joys that will be with those that were.

(1992)

Canaletto's House

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We came upon the doorway quite by chance
— Though I’d glimpsed before a picture in a book
That showed a similar domestic scene.  A glance
Was enough to confirm the house was worth a look.
We entered: across the bare courtyard and up
The smooth-worn stones to the museum.  Now, of course,
It was completely different: the chairs, the rug, that cup,
They must have been fakes.  Or rather their original source
Was another room.  Did that diminish their truth?
This was his home; he stood by that window, saw
Profoundly what we only peered at (alien, uncouth).
But I think he’d have understood our visit.  More:
Approved.  He too liked to imagine the view
As it never was, from places he never knew.

(1992)

Premises

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The underlying fallacy runs thus:
Venice begat Casanova; he was a great
Lover; couples feel “That’s for us”
— And go.  They all do it, blubbing in a spate
Of sentimentality.  But even in ripe
Old age Casanova was a lonely addict, fearing
He danced under the hill of Venus to a magic pipe
Played by himself.  We got away, clearing
Out like rats from a sinking city.  We went
Across the dank lagoon to Murano and its funny-
Peculiar shops where tourists never tarried.
In each, a furnace, a slow liquid bent
And blown again and again.  “ — Don Giovanni — ”
“ — Losey's.”  And with this figure our minds married.

(13.9.92)

Among The Celts

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Goths, vandals, hooligans — term them what you will,
They had swept down from lands beyond the plains,
Charged through the gates, vaulted the bridges, to mill
Around the noble palace we had taken such pains
To get to early.  And yet they were there,
Shrieking and howling in a barbarous tongue, waiting
For us almost.  Worse: ahead on the stair,
They blocked our path into the primitive forest.  Hating
This schoolbrat invasion of our cultured private showing,
We tried to look at the artefacts.  They were good,
But better was the exhibition’s insight that the growing
Celtic tribes who covered huge tracts could
Be justly called the the first Europeans.  And these
— Loutish, yelling, young — the second, if you please.

(4.10.92)

La Dogana

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What wine?  Ah....  Can I just say, before —
No: let’s start again.  As we passed through the door
— No, after that, after the meal, I said:
‘Les Goehr furrow wok.’  But really, of course, I meant:
‘Let’s go for a walk.’  Boorishly, I insisted;
You were kind, didn’t complain, said ‘yes’
As if you liked wandering the freezing, pitch-black streets,
The wind whipping open your coat.  So we went
Along the Zattere, where Venice meets
The waters in a border of sloshing, cloudy green —
The Giudecca channel.  All right, then, I confess:
I was tipsy.  But honestly, I didn’t mean 
To throw you in by the Dogana: your elevation
Was more a toast, a love-drunk declaration.

(5.9.92)

San Giorgio Maggiore

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Once more to my church.  Breaching the waters across
The lagoon to yon improbable, fabulous isle,
— A keep for God's warriors — gently we toss.
Challenged at first by the rude facade, we file
In to be conquered by the nave’s cool perfection.
Then, we scale the giddying tower to meet
And match the past.  For here, sans protection,
I'd sat on the parapet, a heavenly kingdom at my feet.
Behind me had stood a worried monk.  Would
I jump?  He did not know — nor did I.  Should 
He do something...?  We battled; we each won
Against different dragons, the act undone.
But this day, the only monster we fought
Was the howling wind.  ‘Beastly, by George,’ I thought.

(3.10.92)

L'Indipendente

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Call it my daily addiction: “I need words
To quicken my mental agility.”  You, of course,
Were unimpressed.  Like Venice pigeons, birds
Of thought would swoop down in my head and force
A token feeding, a small act of assuage-
ment.  You’d just lie a-bed, silent, sleeping.
Or, if not, regarding me, the page,
The hour, wondering what folly could still be keeping
Me from you, warmth and nightly love.
“I do really want you now, my sparrow....
Pardon?  More than my paper?  Well, yes, my dove.”
But why must the route be so straight and the road so narrow?
We quarreled freely, both passionate defendants;
And even arguing, were one — in independence.

(4.5.92)

Picture Postcard

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Behind us lay the quintessential staves,
Palladio’s great churches — all pediment and thrust;
And lacquered gondolas, of course, jostled by waves
Which licked the Piazzetta at the slightest gust.
In front, the blushing Palazzo, the to and fro’
Of throngs: the over-excited Japanese, the French,
The obvious, obese Americans, the whole sorry show
Of tourism.  We did not see.  On our stone bench
We contemplated the gentlemanly bell-tower, my head
Now resting at your bosom, now in your lap.
We did not care what the world said,
Whether our marginal presence spoilt its snap.
Fearing neither obloquy nor stricture
We knew we made a perfect and proper picture.

(26.7.92)

Pensione Calcina

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It was half-familiar, as if I had seen it from the water
While passing in a vaporetto — number 8,
As I recall.  Particularly the mortar:
That dirty, homely pink.  Not a great
Palace, but good enough for Ruskin.  Yes,
Perhaps I knew it on account of him — a plaque
High on the wall?  Sour John I must bless
For his signal love of these crumbling stones, and for the mark
He left on another visitor: my delectable Proust.
To forget failure Marcel came to slake
His thirst for art; but instead, concretely, he produced
Those monumental tomes about a cake
And a paving flag.  We too will remember,
I think, our breakfast at the Calcina, that pivotal November.

(8.9.92)