The beds are always made, and bright hallways
veer off like lanes, looking for canals to leap
across in a white arch, and the stairs rise

My mother wants to see me again. That means she'd like me
   to shave off my beard.
She points her thumb at the dark portrait of a bearded man,

I'll never be as handsome as my father,
singing Vivaldi, when he's seventy-five,
beneath gold domes or strolling by the water.

I was sick, more or less, for the whole trip,
and so she got to know the pharmacists
of Venice, claiming it would help to sip

Hudsons and Studebakers ruled the streets, 
a crossing guard and teenagers the pavement 
when I was eight. But that was an improvement