Invisible City
Hasn’t everyone lived in an invisible
And essentially unreal, imaginary city
With beautiful empty buildings on byways
Or sewers called canals filled with
Slopping water and huge coffins offering
Pronged upright musical clefs to the air
As the whole load staggers nobly
Toward the extraordinary, and maybe Venice
Was named for Venus, the gondola
For someone gone over the edge,
Poled politely up and down with art
By fellows in straw hats and jerseys,
Warehouses, churches, and meeting places,
A Bridge of Sighs where lovers and prisoners
Are still confused and identical as in
D.H. Lawrence’s mating of whales poem where
Archangels of bliss cross over a bull’s
Let’s call it his Bridge of Signs,
For in clandestine Venice, as if named
For Venus, although no whales, there are
Waves of blindness, or a gaudy bondage
To which one submits, and life draws
All its lumens from that bridge.
by Kenneth Rosen
from Everyday Seductions
edited by Gary Soto
Ploughshares, Spring, 1995