Like a fantastic dream fading away on the wings of the night,
Venice is slowly sinking into the deepening sea.
And as it sinks into that sea,
It takes all of its beloved treasures with it:
The bronze winged lion in St. Mark's Square
That once seemed to lord it over the whole Mediterranean world;
The magnifiscent basillica itself
With its fabulous cupollas and spires;
The Murano glassworks;
The Doge's palace, the Rialto bridge
And all the Rennaissance merchant houses
Where the merchants of Venice once stood on their balconies
Admiring it all in a contented rapture.
Now those facades crumbling away along the Grande Canal
Seem like decaying ruins of a legendary era,
The fading notes of a violin
In a dilapitated opera house,
A hazy figure walking off down the street
After the last of the carnival masquerade balls.
The merchants of Venice who built this city
Out of the wealth from the silk road and spice road
Blazed by the journey of Marco Polo
Must have thought all these decorations of culture
Would somehow last forever and ever.
But then, out of nowhere, came the discovery of the new world,
The voyages of Columbus and Magellan
That shifted the old trade routes away
To London and Lisbon and Amsterdam,
And Venice began its long, slow decline.
So, at long last, the masterpieces of Boticelli and Titian,
The exquisite concertos of Vivaldi
And the romantic cantos of the gondoliers
Waver like reflections on the rising waters
Or glimmer like fading stars,
Flickering candlelight in a forgotten window.
And as we sail away, for the last time,
Leaving the residents to wade through the floods
Outside the museums and the restaurants and the hotels,
Leaving the artisans to sink into the lagoon,
Leaving the last tour guides making a mournful way
Like a funeral procession through the crumbling piazzas,
We have to sigh as Venice slips under the waves
And we hear the last peels of its bells
And the last songs of its carnival revellers,
As we watch the last pidgeons deserting its fountains.
And we have to wonder as we think of its splendor;
Where will we go now?
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