Another poem

Across from Sante Croce on the Ca’ D’oro,
The sun low and golden in the warm early evening
Rippling reflection on the Grand Canal,
Sliced by the black gondolas.

Violin music floats through the air,
Falling and dying in the water,
The devil’s daughter
Swallows the sound.

Nobody can hear her,
Above the endless clacking newsreel,
Clack, Clack, Clack
Stuck in your throat.

Music promises an escape from meaning,
A personal situation that cannot be linked to anything grander,
For it is not, it is less.
Grief can be more,
On the edge of war.

Clack, Clack, Clack

The typewriter,
The enduring quality of words arranged
As carefully as carvings on a stone.

No good comes from dwelling,
What might have been does not matter.