My friend, a native of the Veneto,

            Was growing conscious of his years

            Perhaps that’s why I heard a little more,

            The skeins to childhood,

            Skirmishes, meanderings, the inevitable catastrophe

            He worked like a sculptor –

            Not so much smoothing clay

            As adding on, the press of fingertips

            Less sure but less constrained

            On the unfinished head

            His features were less mobile now

            But they occasionally flared and 

            I could tally what he told

            With what I hadn’t known

            The coffees came and went and

            The piazza stirred with grumblings and flirtation

            To begin the night

            I was familiar with Venetian masks

            And so I made a secondary mould,

            One that would capture more of him than me,

            And filled it in to fashion a 

            Remembrance, flexible and light, 

            That could be donned at whim

            And show the side of truth

            That can unveil by covering