Venice - As I read it not
The duke was still in state
in the ducal palace, weather-worn
but gleaming gold in the dusk;
The launches heaved in the twilight
and lights along the skyline twinkled
in luminous blue and gold;
In the mysterious rhythm of the gondolas
was the sigh of the voluptuous Jessica,
lips long silent and eyes dry of tears;
Shylock buried and Antonio grey
swings from an illuminated shop-window,
Bassanio peeps from the arching Rialto
Portia was markedly absent: mayhap
putting her feet up in some cosy parlour
reads and declaims to herself
The borderlines of some feminist theory
The waters soft-lap and the night
split in the laughter of impish Salario
The sirens tear the silence of the night
and the tide swirls in along the canals.