On Not Dying in Venice

I should have known better
than to drink the water in Venice,
summer 1956, our honeymoon;
the water was black and oily
and tasted like ink.
Writing without pen or paper
while I writhed on my bed in Venice
the black water scrawled graffiti
on the walls of my brain --
You will not die in Venice, it said --
(It was Carnevale; from the Grand Canal
fireworks flew in the window,
illuminated my fever
to a bouquet of bursting roses)
You will ride on an opiate cloud, the water said --
each black letter looped with grace,
a perfect European hand,
all the way home where for years
you will pretend you're a gypsy
but fail to read your own palm --
(Already the moon was losing its fullness)
And not until decades later
will you realize
that a fragment
in isolation is a whole --
be it a single gold mosaic tile;
one reticule of a fishnet spread to dry
on nearby Murano, Burano, Torcello;
one cell with its own nucleus, cilia, membrane;
one distant night you will illuminate
by reflecting
on when you drank the water in Venice
and how you did not die
with the marriage, that long ago phase of the moon,
did not sink in the brackish Adriatic
or succumb to dead fires' acrid fumes