Three Poems

Piazza San Marco

It was spring. Too early spring, before
the Easter innocents and local rogues
profaned the set, the hungry birds performed
their cooing begging ritual in droves.
Early morning, too. Cafés still closed.
Fishmongers and garbage scows along
the Grand Canal. Two lonely pigeons strolled
across the great expanse till church bells stung
them into sudden flight. Surprising cold,
the light which wavered with the water's lung,
foreshadowing a drowning end to all
this 'history', in time called by the young.

So whitely, quietly snow fell on stone,
laced the terra cotta and was gone.


Death in Florence
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