Was It Florence or Venice

Was it Florence or Venice
canal or river
milky green the water
of scraps, sedge, canoes
afloat
on wrinkled palaces
like a burning film
in sunlight

Going between the two
cities, their
differences less as one grows
familiar with pure Italy
although there are
so many, as many
as the eyes of the
beholder

a face, irreducible
worldly, yet rich
with light of other worlds
takes shape definite as
lion’s or rose’s, fills
the beholder with
content as of living
in the real.

As of living in a
landscape prepared by a
master hand, the details of a
painting where violence
struggle, bitterness
have carefully been
resolved-not as
irrelevancies but

transcended like a slime
the flower or man
grows out of Venice built
on palings and
flowered from rock Fiorenza
which crumbling in the final
hour will have
left their sign.