Into the cradle rocking endlessly,
Vitruvian, spread-eagled on the bed,
He balances what's lilting in his head.
The vaporettos harried by the gulls
Still crest the modest swells on which he'll sleep.
He rides all night the rhythm of the sea
That floods the green lagoon; that laps and lulls,
Whether the tide is spring or ebb or neap.
And as the waters go on with their washing
Of the hundred shallow-drafting hulls
That wave their way along, plying the Grand
Canal, his twinning inner ears are sloshing,
Insisting like a dull sestina on
A music that will never reach the land,
A barcarolle that longs to moor at dawn.
Len Krisak
If you have any thoughts about this poem, Len Krisak would like to hear them
