San Marco

“Now the symptoms of earth sinking into water are come” – The Bardo Thodol

The stones, lulled sepulcher-green in the water. A bowed streak glides in the chilled perspective of the canal mist. When you're in one place, you recall another. A road-hard couple puckers up. She wears a ruff and sighs, clutching his frilled cuff. One's fate gets anonymously sealed in a lion's mouth. I eavesdrop on the cafe table beside. A hoary-bearded American, who looks like he's found his lost shaker of salt, discuses exorcism with a young padre, perhaps warming the seat of one Russian poet of not so auld, who dreamed of being buried in this city, and whose wishes were granted. I catch a glimpse of another city, a little to the north, of many spires, ash and thresholds that kept me at bay, wanting more, where everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt. There I saw the statue of a knight, with whom another Russian poet used to talk, hatching plans of revenge by means of a bridge and one's own life. Her wishes were granted elsewhere but not in the planned fashion. The American and the padre stare absently at the piazza. It takes them a while to recover the power of expression, close to the vespertine hour, when they leave their table and vanish at the same corner as last time.