The Friday Poem on 15/03/2024
A visit to Italy as a student changed the life of Tishani Doshi – she says it gave her a sense of dolce vita, that life is sweet and beautiful, and meant to be full of passion – and Rachel Spence captures some of that transformative power in her poem. Venice is the main character here, and she’s a complex and compelling one. It’s not all romance – we are shown the garbage, the dilapidated buildings, and the ambushed kitten too – but by the end we are all seduced by the city known as the Queen of the Adriatic.
Because this is a Venice Poem (after Tishani Doshi)
Expect to hear the words lagoon, pigeon, crumbling.
Expect to read of water as desire, light as moral compass.
Expect the poet to steal the city’s sins and omissions
for her own failure to guard what she holds dear.
No-one so rigid as the truly fluid.
She may touch on squalor,
refuse sweating on basilica steps,
kitten flailing in a seagull’s beak,
history refracted through a selfie-stick.
But how can she convey the way the city
marinades you, serenades you, persuades you?
Venice will transform your disquiets
and displacements into rites and oracles.
She’ll make your sacrifices and say your prayers.
You will become a murderer let off on a technicality.
And when you have surrendered to your role
as slave and mendicant, she’ll show you
how to map her as a lizard maps a garden wall –
each rotting brick, each desiccated vine.
Blindly. Through scent and tongue alone.
As if she was the last city God made.
Go on. Cancel your flight. Stay.
