By Anthony Matheson
No matter how I deny it
the dark city is waiting, threatening me with love.
Winter glides silent along the misted canal;
the musicians, the girls in their hundreds,
are glimpsed uncertainly, deep in the waters,
their funeral music drowned, their decay
beyond the reach of any Casanova.
The perfume of deception, beloved of the city,
emerges from the depths to blossom on the surface,
like dead flowers secretly blooming. The buildings emit
the slight, wet sound of fading breath as they sink,
oppressed by the weight of churches, descending
magisterial and decadent
onto the doomed girls and their Red Father,
onto the beggars, the Doges, the rich, rich dead,
onto twelve hundred years of beauty, the dark mask
of beauty concealing beauty, and all must be requited.
As the waters render their account, the mask and the wearer
are waiting, charging me with a lifelong debt,
threatening me with love,
no matter how I deny it.