Found it
I heard it once in the car on the way back from my grandparents' house, just as we were about 5-10 minutes from home. I can't have been more than about 12 years old.
Venice
The old boat clatters through the Grand Canal;
it’s near midnight and cold; the water we plough
through is like ink, the rotting, ruined palaces
haunted by money and dead countesses
are whiter than paper; crumpled, spoiled paper
folded into these sinking facades.
The great dome of the Salute is a dead pearl
festooned with charnel statues paler than bones,
dirty and sightless, a slipped wreath
of twisted saints and straining prelates
reaching towards heaven from their precarious
perches, feet frozen, slipping, stone mouths yawing.
When day comes in a vapour of mist
we walk the tight-bound, teetering streets
with no room to pass, no space to turn in,
no milky flawed opal sky visible,
just round and round, past the cafes empty
of summer tourists and vain churches empty of voices.
On one old wall, the Holy Mother spreads
her carved cloak wide to protect the tiny people
clustered at her feet; Magna Mater, her face eaten
by age and pollution, blunt and blind;
would She give me, if I asked Her,
a blue Venetian glass heart, like the ones they
sell in every shop we pass; a small thing,
like a child’s jewel, a dressing-up necklace
that you could lose in the salt crash of the sea
and not regret, that would catch the sun like a drop of sky...
Would She give me, do you think, a blue glass heart
to replace my broken one?
Joolz Denby
That's why I've always wanted to go to Venice. It's also why I've never bought one of these:
a blue one
obviously
even though it would be so easy to, even though I've always secretly wanted one, even though my heart is not broken.
I think I am allowed to have one now.
File under: life