And so we stood
alone in the rain
on the broad piazza
in front of the temple,
bronze horses on the roof.
Though we were married
it married us again
to be there, the Adriatic
lapping at the stone,
we couldn’t hear tt
but we could feel it,
the way you hear music
when somebody says Bach.
Then we went back
to the suburbs, friend’s house,
human insistence on the small.
Thank God for little things,
Tiny communion wafer—
we call it Bread
and see in the mind’s eye
a great brown loaf
that feeds our billions
if we consent to eat.

Suburbs like Old Mill in Brooklyn,
I was shocked, little canal, scattered brick cottages
in empty fields—my childhood suddenly was all around me
and speaking Italian too.
Though not the dialects I heard,
chopped off vowels of Sicilian,
but the water smelled the same.

2.
So why does anybody get married?
Because a place is most real
when you’re together. Shades
deeper, bricks firmer, rain
refreshing, all the playful
teasing of the actual.
Of course it has to be Venice,
the clitoris of Europe,
there in the crowds before
San Marco or the white beauty
of Santa Maria della Salute
where we stood all alone
on the stone that holds the sea.

Of course be married–
how else can you know
what’s really there
without another self to tell you?

3.
Grey but no rain
here today
and mild enough
to coax the forsythia
I need for Friday,
my mother’s birthday.

Venice is just a beautiful
excuse for talking
about marriage,
talking always about love.
It is, I suddenly remember,
the city solemnly married the sea
in the days of the Doges.
And now it’s for us to do it,
hand in hand on the marble prow
we do what we can,
the purest way we can, heal
the world by being in it together.

5 April 2023