PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO
After the sky has shaded from indigo
to sepia, when swifts have gone and pigeons
roost in the crepuscular arcades,
when the Basilica’s looted bronze horses
are illumined – where Rossano Brazzi
and Katherine Hepburn failed to meet
at any one of the five cafés in
Napoleon’s ‘most splendid drawing room
in Europe’, where Proust (holidaying
at the Danieli with mother) corrected
his translation of Ruskin and criticised
the risotto, where Casanova
evaded the watch – then the eclectic
clock tower, the three, competing string orchestras,
and the melancholy campanile
accompany gratis a young man, alone,
masked, waltzing on the marble pavement.
By David Selzer