Merchants in Venice

We arrive in Venice to ancient acoustics:

the swaddling of paddle in water,

thud of the vaporetto against the landing site,

and the turbulent frescoes of corridors and ceilings,

belief and power sounding history

with the bells of the subdivided hour,

on water, air and all surfaces of light.

What have we Africans to do with this?

With holy water, floating graves and cypresses,

the adamantine intricacy of marble floors,

gold borders of faith, Mary's illuminated face

and the way Tintoretto's Crucifixion is weighted

with the burden of everyday sin and sweat,

while the city keeps selling its history and glass.

On the Rialto, tourists eye the wares

of three of our continent's diasporic sons,

young men in dreadlocks and caps, touting

leather bags and laser toys in the subdued dialect

of those whose papers never are correct,

homeboys now in crowded high-rise rooms

edging the embroidered city.

How did they get from Dakar to Venice?

What brotherhood sent them to barter and pray?

And on long rainy days when the basilica

levitates, dreaming of drowning,

do they think of their mission and mothers,

or hover and hustle like apprentice angels

over the shrouded campos and spires?

Into the city we have come for centuries,

buyers, sellers, mercenaries, spies,

artists, saints, the banished,

and boys like these: fast on their feet,

carrying sacks of counterfeit goods,

shining in saturated light,

the mobile inheritors of any renaissance.