For Jules

Recent graffiti despoils the faded peach, skin blushed walls
of crumbling plaster, baked crisp by fierce summers’ heat.
Grand canyons steeply cleaved in two by cool waters
transporting this city’s daily provender and bulky goods,
thrown into and out of low boats, creeping, by rhythmic Venetians, bending.
Steeped in history’s memories of exotic cultures passing through
to places far and foreign – a mecca of wonders of distant worlds;
soaked and absorbed into the fabric of buildings and washed
and sifted; softened; cleansed; transformed by flowing waters
ebbing and flowing, tidally driven, mystically moved.
See faces made by ancient Banksy’s form like clouds and disappear.
Sun shifted with shadows cast on the vertical sides of palaces
and basilicas; stately temples of music and drama; cultural shrines
of beauty and art; of Murano glass and Renaissance tapestries.
Ghosts of artists’ images cast in transient pictures there.
A nose, a chin, a classical sihouette – can you see it? Im not sure…