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THE LAST N I G H T OF A FIRST TRIP TO VENICE Awakened in the dead of night by the clatter Of cloudy panes, I hurried to the window. Rows of gondolas rocking on the swells. Absence pressed heavily against the oars. An arpeggio struck from a guitar Made me search the sky,where a three-pronged spear Blazed above the horizon, watery, Gray, and where the sun scattered no ashes. The zodiac strikes the lonliest chords. Undaunted, the harbor went on with this Misty shape-shifting as if the trident Didn't exist.And no one else to witness! Land and sea split off. Palaces capsized. A planetary fortress was sighted. Houses whirled, but while it looked like chaos, They returned, like the planets, to their sites. As the day began to break I began To grasp that Venice was also adrift In the midst, in the blurred boundary Between so-called reality and dream. Growing more surefooted with every step, I crossed bridges I couldn't see. I heard The far off whispers of conspirators. I saw myself on Marburg's cobblestones— The day I blurted out to Hermann Cohen That I was giving up philosophy, And would soon depart for Venice. I braced myself. "Logic is not for everyone 158 Maybe you'll find your way around the haze That separates us from the things themselves." "In Venice there is metamorphosis. Boundaries are erased. Stone becomes porous. And like a blossom in the throws of foam, And like a rabid foaming at the lips, A chord sounded in the shadowy vague. The who and where and why didn't matter. (after Boris Pasternak) 159 ...

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