On the Photo of San Zacccaria, Venice, By Thomas Struth, Cleveland Museum of Arts

Whether it is the immortal

characters in the old

masters’ paintings

or the immortal visitors

gathered in those galleries

to see one another,

they barely notice

how they are copied

all from one another

since not everyone has

one’s own private painter

or one’s reserved poet

writing in some

ancient key or vein

carrying forth and up

a sap of one leafy soul

in the air of the hush-hush—

exhibition hall now frayed

to a poem’s single thread

and as if strayed and stranded

had all been merely an isle

or my native island

that one could never leave.

And so the immortals

in those venerable paintings

and their immortal visitors

devotedly glance

and wordlessly pass

in and out from one to another

in a still born desire

to be themselves

immortal—in a piece of art,

just like a soul

in a coup d’œil,

irreversible and live

and—in nothing else

than in a necklace—

of the precious & singular,

though transient moments

made of poetic—old love.