Photo credit: Neil Creighton

The first bell tolls. It is 7 A.M.
Dawn has arrived but Venice is quiet.
Boats laden with produce chug under bridges.
Fruit vendors set up their street stalls.
Workers trickle in by train or vaporetto
and sleepily walk, hands in pockets,
eyes downcast. A street sweeper
whisks away the myriad cigarette butts.
Rubbish lies in the streets in neat little piles.
The  Rialto Bridge is empty and still.
No gondolas move serenely along
the green canals or under the pontes.
A lone photographer is in St. Mark's square
looking for morning's soft glow of light.
The marbled splendor of palaces,
museums, galleries and churches
stand quietly as if in waiting.
The footsteps of locals walking their dogs echo,
for the great, heaving mass of people
that choke the lanes, bridges and squares
and line in great, serpentine queues
outside St. Mark's Basilica or Doge's Palace
have not yet emerged from their slumber.
The glittering shops beneath the crumbling buildings
are sleeping too, as if gathering strength
for the shoulder to shoulder crush of the coming day.
                        

Photo credit: Neil Creighton

I walk slowly through crumbling beauty
in quiet, still, crowd-free early morning,
passing by the little pontes, the Rialto Bridge,
sleek, curved, black gondolas at their mooring;

I wander narrow lanes and alleyways
to St. Marks’ Square, its splendor of marble,
into the Doge’s Palace, the Golden Staircase,
and there in awed silence stop and marvel.
 
Rich, carved and painted rooms reveal a past
when trade from the East made Venice great;
unimaginable wealth and great beauty
designed to overwhelm and intimidate.

In this room nervous ambassadors waited;
this one has a Raphael painted ceiling;
a third and fourth are to judge and govern;
a fifth has paintings deeply revealing.
 
This fifth is large.  Paintings floor to ceiling 
depict Venetian sea battles. On each wall
thousands of ships tangle in brutal chaos,
scenes of death and horror to deeply appall.

In the forefront of one a man in agony,
eyes rolling, mouth open, clutches an arrow 
embedded in the centre of his forehead,
a single emblem of this carnage and woe. 
 
 I walk back into beautiful St Mark’s Square.
It too has displays of wealth and power-
gilded mosaics, golden winged angels,
the spear-wielding saint on his high tower.

My mind is troubled by those sea battles,
the thought of that sailor as he dies,
troubled too by the thought that this splendor
came at the cost of ordinary men’s lives.
 
Then I think of that old paradox-
how rapacious commerce plays its part,
not just in the beauty of architecture,
but in the wonder and glory of art,

and looking around this beautiful place,
this land ingeniously reclaimed from the sea,
see in it the beauty and the horror
that characterizes human society
 
and walking slowly past the gypsy beggars, 
the street hawkers, the tangled human throng
that moves in shoulder to shoulder press,
everywhere I hear that ancient song

of money, power, desire and need,
that relentless pursuit of beauty and wealth,
save Venice no longer needs ships to trade, 
for Venice has trade sufficient in just itself.
                        

Photo credit: Neil Creighton

A few short steps, perhaps a dozen or so,
A few short steps across the Bridge of Sighs,
A few short steps to dungeons of woe,
A few short steps to fear and despise.

Short steps from the Doge's splendor,
short steps from the pride wealth imparts,
short steps from power, prestige and honor,
short steps from the palace of gold and art.

The Bridge of Sighs is for heavy tread,
the Bridge of Sighs makes the heavy heart stop,
just a few short steps but with boots of lead,
a few short steps to a precipitous drop.