Some people are changing
the world,
dropping their pens
to make a fist.

Some people are
writing poems to change the world,
poems
built around a fist.

Uncontained
in this fat block of words
is anything as wholesome
as a soul-solid righteous
punch in the jaw:

oh, I was clenching my fist
as I wrote it,
I could see that target jaw,
just one of so many…
but then I saw

that while I too have a fist and a pen
it’s an aimless fist
and an empty pen.

I wanted to punch this poem
for being
unconvicted!
For draining my pen
and opening my hand.  I told myself
coward,
has been…

but you know, it’s morning
and the warriors will be home soon.
Maybe this is exactly
what they will want
when they get here.

There are facts which are not known to be facts
except by some deep apprehension of their truth
long before they become true —

as in, for instance, there’s no evidence yet
for the truth of my conviction that I shall never
return to Venice, or that how it vanished, slowly,

as I stared back at it from the stern of the motoscafi 
that took me to the airport for the trip home
will be my permanent last memory of the city.

It’s not a fact yet that I will never see Venice again.
But I know it to be true as solidly as I know anything.
It’s as true as the scar in my foot from the time I stepped

on broken Murano glass.  As true as
the smell of the crematorium on San Michele.  As true
as the Albanian refugees begging wordlessly on bridges. 

Someday you will be able to say that I visited Venice just once in my life,
that it left a scar upon me I can feel whenever I walk.  Every step
I’ve taken since I left has carried me further away from Venice. 

This won’t be a fact for years yet, only blooming fully as such
on the day I die. But I know a fact when I conceal one,
and daily I do my best to conceal this,

a thing I know to be unalterably true.