Night Ferry

Abstract

Night Ferry Richie Hofmann (bio) I. Night Ferry Everywhere the city looks over my shoulder. The air grows colder and sticks to wet stones, the old houses rescued from the rising water, even the covered boat where I take refuge from the wind, still it tousles the pages of my guidebook. The ferry disengages from the docks, and I am far away. The Adriatic salts the undersides of boats as they depart from the city, fade. I lean and see what is made in their wake. I know I will not find my dissolution here in this city of water and stone, where I’m a hierophant to the past. They enchant me, these things. I always knew they’d make the veil I’d glimpse things through. Tonight, distantly, the cold air comes off the square, where all those people, bundled in winter coats, line up to buy tickets for the boats. Everywhere the city disguises them from each other. The black ferry moves. The water rises in the dark. The people disembark. [End Page 75] II. The Marriage of the Sea The city remembered nothing of what I dreamed. Only how strange it seemed from the water when the Doge’s hand, or his black glove, opened, and he released the ring to wed the Adriatic, and the ring settled twice: first, on the lagoon’s surface, which represented, I thought, the comfort of the living moment, and which yielded to the ring; and, later, in the earth beneath the water, which was fierce as history, and which yielded to it also, after many years, and found stasis in the past, which was its rest, not in the luster of ceremonies, but in the darkness which comes after. III. Self-Portrait in Venetian Mask The mask with a long sharp beak I found, an antique in a store of relics, displayed on the wall. The mask I tried on. Like a shade, it kept me from my life. You, too, have wishedfor something else, you have vanished [End Page 76] almost fully, the mask said, as if a mask critiquing itself could convince me it was not my own mouth speaking. IV. Serenissima Elegy The city cleaved things: together and apart: a bridge restrained one ancient house from another: the whole city was reflected below the city: the bridge where they hanged prisoners: the tableau of bodies held suspended as on a frieze, splendid with color and movement: thousands of bits of glass: small islands of gold and purple and bronze glued into images: a pagan nude with a feather: halos in concentric rings: the rudder cut its dark path through the water, pushing wake to either side, as if sorting testimonies of love from jealousy: from above, it must have looked like the black canal was rent apart, halved, no matter where I went. [End Page 77] Richie Hofmann Richie Hofmann is the recipient of a 2012 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, among other honors. His poems have appeared in a number of magazines, including Poetry, FIELD, Yale Review, and the New Yorker. He is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Copyright © 2013 Middlebury College Publications