A poem called "The Villas of Andrea Palladio"
as occasioned by a boat ride down the Brenta from [? Padua ?]
to Venice, visiting these great villas and coming out onto
the lagoon in the poem here follows the trajectory
on several levels at once.
There, once again, at the world's very edge,
you're pointing out palaces, aren't you?
Tapping that viscous glass, holding them,
the immemorabile, at the tip of your lacquered nail.
There, just there, where the barge pivots,
seems to station in the midst of its own vapors.
"See it?" you ask.
I see your lacquered nail, its wavering reflection,
follow it across those stalled waters, pier.
pilaster, fronton, the pure scale
of so much hallucinatory mass.
Not even a hedgerow to break the effect,
not even a stray dog, the ragged line of its leash.
Null, in so many numbers, isn't this what you mean?
This, that's meant?
Blown mirrors, the void in which, turgid,
our viscera would glow?
Among the room, rooms, the words empty--
spacious-- enough to withhold us?
Isn't this, that's nothing, what the cells--
wedging-- would jam?
Billows about you, a scarf of clouds, pigeons.
Yes, a sudden air of apparent bewilderment.
Tell, tell me to myself, before even you get
swept into that wash of sounds, the lagoon,
already, in a sputter of tugs, marked by so many rigorously
aligned pilings.
Yes, before our own breath hardens
about its very words, and our bodies, once again,
beat against the muslin of their veiled reflections.