A Reverie In Venice Poem by Michael Galvin

While tourists crowd and graze among the reproductions,
the gaze of Perseus focuses
bronze infinity beyond the works of art.

Tendrils drip from the gorgon's neck.
There's the severing blade, the fist in the hair,
the mask that saw itself and died,
the hero's muscular tranquillity.

There was nourishment here when blood was loud.

Now verses cast from the tale drop to the ground with a sandy piff.
The edge is dull; there is no profit
raising scandal, ghost, or some other modern offence.

Her infuriating astonishments recoiled on the traveller,
offering opposite directions to the same centre.
But she had no centre, only signs a mask he learned
in another age guaranteed survival,
until in the evening flooding San Marco,
a small orchestra sobs at the end of the world.

She showed her face then,
offered for wonder a gutted arrogance and pitted grace
no other pleading could restore.
The sweating alleys to our room sung an accordion
stabbing Bach's fingers. The day we left,
the mirrored sun chopped her body like a saw.