/~-/~-/~-/~-

I used your love letter for directions
the one where you wrote you were going to Salerno
on the bus, and stopping at Rimini
for the antiques market
I bought an embossed photo album
made in Venice. Sleeping on the Po Delta dunes
the sleep freezed and infused
and the bubbly prostitute at the industrial port
opposite Venice
making eye contact/ her cola bottle/
in Venice the staircase
above the canal, to the room,
the canal and the windows
were stained glass creeks/
the canals replicate the beauty
of creeks, mixed with alleys
of a palace/ of gardens/
and the students from the design school
on the piazza, the campo, with glasses of wine
for eighty cents, the students were good looking
& it was like the Poets' Cafe
in Cocteau's Orphée,
where the poets start to brawl
and death comes by on motorbikes
and I sat in the steps to the water
taking discreet photographs
of the students,
the crab was walking on the steps in algae
and the students were like sea creatures
the rock pool of the campo
and everything had one or two pieces
of very special jewellery,
like the crab's claw/ its luminous shell/ everything
was subtly hung
with precious stones or metal
or draped to the floor in a long coat.
Crawling out of algae.
Libraries in the creeks.