Along Galeana Street by Octavio Paz
translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bishop
Contemporary World Poetry
pulverized voices
From the top of the afternoon
the builders come straight down
We're between blue and good evening
here begin vacant lots
A pale puddle suddenly blazes
the shade of the hummingbird ignites it
Reaching the first houses
the summer oxidizes
Someone has closed the door......someone
speaks with his shadow
It darkens......There's no one in the street now
not even this dog
scared to walk through it alone
One's afraid to close one's eyes
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“Everyone in Venice is acting,” Count Cirolamo Marcello told me. “Everyone plays a role, and the role changes. The key to understanding Venitians is rhythm.” ~ The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
Bridges
Water sighs with chipping stone
sinking voices
from the crawl of the mainland.
Actors busy the canals.
They’re between this world and reality
progressing with the tidal rhythm.
Transitions must be crossed slowly
or not at all.
Painting a tromp l’oeil.
Life and art bound to a
reality that is once removed.
Sunlight on a canal reflects
from a ceiling to a vase then scatters across a glass bowl.
Perception – twice removed –
with mirrored rhythm.
Reality in Venice lasts as long as the tides.
The actors breathe deeply. Walking
into Campo Manin
an air of finality spreads -
the opposite of telling the truth.
Though I confess that I am drawn to representations of Italy, as I have devoted a great deal of work to that, this is also some wonderful writing. Take a look, now, at something like Richard Wilbur's "Baroque Fountain . . ." or even Anthony Hecht's "A Hill," both in your anthology, I believe. Notice how they, as Hugo says, "get off subject. Maybe try one of their moves?
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