SLEEPWALKING IN VENICE
Two kinds of imagination: the strong, the promiscuous.
—Leopardi
Calle Rombiasio
Watching a boneless nymph’s
half-hearted resurrection
from a spout in the pavement
over and over; catching a glimpse
of the source of my exhaustion,
as if my gaze all this time had lent
muscular support to her effort . . .
She wasn’t at all as mischievous
as her sisters, who seeped up
through the flagstones of the court,
serving the blue basilica to us
repurposed as a teacup.
Nor was she as splenetic asthe poltergeist in the moka pot,seething liquid from every fissure,then exploding on its ring of gas.If it seemed that water was fraughtwith divinities under pressure,
