A couple of months ago (see 15 June posting + cover artwork) we ran a news item about regular IS&T contributor Gwilym Williams' new collection Genteel Messages (Poetry Monthly Press, ISBN 978-1-906357-17-7). About the same time I was reading a book about 'street photography' which argued the point that when the genre first appeared in France in the mid-to-late 19th century, there was a close relationship between the photographs being taken and the 'street poetry' being written by the likes of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. (I know, all go off on a creative writing masters course and discuss.) What particularly appeals to me about this poem from Williams' collection is that reflects that street poetry ethos. Enjoy …Ed.
On Venice Lido
Cargo ships and oil tankers bound for Mestre or Trieste
wait patiently in the queue on the long horizon.
Here in 1912 Thomas Mann's von Aschenbach
fondly gazed upon his handsome hero,
the young and noble Tadzio,
in his novelette Death In Venice.
Today on the Lido there's really not too much to see
beyond those monochrome ships parked in the haze
and the high up clock on the Hotel des Baines.
On the grey sand there's the usual pre-season plethora
of plastic and polystyrene
Thermovisco is nuzzling with Succo e Polpa Pesca
A pigeon pair is inspecting an unzipped can –
Stolichno Bock Beer rusting in a twisty rage of net.
A miraculous light bulb has washed up – glass unbroken.
There's the occasional squawk of a gull out to sea.
A spray – Byron's Mediterranee Deodorante
– do not expose to naked flame – is corroding at the collar.
Half buried I find a Debica Vivo Radial in good condition.
Other curiosities: a solitary pickled onion
and a pair of welding glasses in Day-Glo orange.
A dog floats by; face down; smooth and slick as a seal.
On the long grey horizon nothing is moving.
On the long beach men are assembling
colonies of bathing huts.
* Gwilym Williams
