With Death in the Via Canale

by Elizabeth Ogle

I decide evasion is futile, amid the whisper
of black cloaks and white masks.
Wherefore we retire by a fountain and discuss life,
the opera.  Slyly, You toss the former in the air,
then flip it with Your thumb into the lionhead fountain.
Odd!  What need have You of luck ?

Soon there will be no opera.  The grave, also, is a balustrade
of ancestors.  Strange, to have such grassy discourse
with You.  To consider the glint of the dusk sun, the impermanence
of monuments.  I wonder
how You came by that scar, but do not ask.
Your reply, anyway:

“How people yearn for their illusory God,
yet duel with me, who turns them all to sod.”

Then rings out across the piazza, the toll
of silence, silence.  This is the hour
of disappearance, when we withdraw
to the shadowed arches of Your empty palazzo.  Confessingly,
I look into your endless eyes.  Signore, please,
I have not lived.

“Be merry, for I am not come for you.
Only to bid you watch your precious time:
this endless talk of ‘then,’ it will not do.”

Fine words!  (For You,
who defy time.)  I’ve no flame, no rhyme,
I’ve only my ash and matches.  Tell me how,
how am I to be satisfied ?
How do I dare
the moment ?

“That is your plight.  No more, I must away —
I have this night ten thousand calls to pay.”