Death In Venice

To confront, night, storms, hunger, accidents, rebuffs…
                                        Walt Whitman

The gondolas were crashing into fabled walls,
pale gondoliers were struggling against the dirges.

They say the town is sinking,
they say Emma’s thighs were blinking one last time.

But who can build a seawall out of art,
greater ones have tried and failed?

Poetry is not substitute for the mechanical
extorted the foreigner Da Vinci.

And how could one young girl hold back the tide
when her amphibian God refused to get his feet wet?