Constance Fenimore Woolson to Henry James

Cast out from work's absorbing converse
       I watch as men and women
       Hurry toward home, each other,
From my room in Ca'Semitecolo;
My grand travel's tin duenna
       Steams unheeded, unheard, behind me.
       Had you made your promised visit
I would have brewed that water you call tea
While you lolled on the divan, so oddly
       Slack compared to the discretions
       Of your chambered prose.
This last summer seemed a vestibule,
A foyer in which I waited to be called
       Into larger, warmer rooms,
       A season rich in patience
Passed in pleasant afternoons spent
Cataloguing the lagoon's lost islands
       Swallowed by the Adriatic.
       I have written histories
Of erosion, epics of incremental
Loss. By autumn my cochlea
       Had hardened to jasper, and I
       Heard new sounds, tickings and
Groans, small volute sighs, as if
Some internal balance had tensed,
       Shifting in the decline of those
       Immaculate days. Complain
As you will that in the summer
Venice is the mere vomitorium
       Of Boston, still there are dusks
       In every season where a conspiracy
Of blues seems to support all this Istrian
Stone (only in Venice does one walk
       On water). Those evenings one feels
       Almost exalted, clarified, this brilliant
Perfidy of illusion made manifest.
How light I feel then! And yet. My own
       True home, my country, I've found
       In your stories, dear Henry, --
Like your letters somewhat more satisfying
Than you. Although I begged you
       To include a woman who loved
       And was loved in return, it seems even
Subtle genius is deaf to certain registers.
If we do not root ourselves in others' hearts,
       our lives are spent on the periphery.
       That sensibility of yours is my
Predicament, capable of constructing more
From absence than most gain from presence.
       I thought I had succeeded in not
       Surrendering to empty forms. Resolved
Not to be the woman whose affections
Were incommensurate to the demands
       Made of them as I was not the tourist
       conditioned to see Venice
As the atelier's empty vistas. But this
Longing, like the desire to hear Vivaldi again,
       Was the sliver around which
       My imagination festered.
Do I confuse you? My real city
With its odors and sea and sewage,
       Its workingmen and beggars against
       A backdrop of splendid associations,
And its images, the faded picturesque;
Love and the idea of love. Basta.
       I cannot live on these margins
       Overhearing imperfectly
Life lived in other rooms. You have
Such talent for arrangement. I should like
       To come back as a mountain,
       Something large and distant
Where people can rest their eyes. Distance
makes large passions larger, makes
       little ones disappear.
       I suspect I shall mean more
Later, that you will come seek me in the places
I have left, peering down at the stone calle
       From this casement (my periphery)
       To console yourself with a notion
Of madness, perhaps. How many times
Have I imagined you in my gondola: last night
       You were there, surrounded by empty
       Bombazine, merino, sateen shapes,
Reproaches of black dresses that you
Wrestled over the side, nervous still
       Of imbalancing. But they wouldn't sink,
       Kept rising, like pity, like
Horror pushed under, dark skirts belling
Around you in winter water like jade,
       Malachite, frozen milk.
       Make me a fastidious
Ghost in gloves and hat, and I will lengthen
Your nights, wading the eroded islands
       Of your dreams through the entire
       Exigent image of a city,
Its many loggias and marble arcades
Flooding above.
       Yours, dear Henry, Fenimore.

Averill Curdy, "From the Lost Correspondence"