Winter's Xanadu

WINTER’S XANADU Boreal Venice with canals of ice Built on frozen rock and sand Of the Pleasure Dome, we have a slice. Spires of gilt and bridges a thousand City of gold from Russia’s Kubla Not on sacred River Alph Peter’s Xanadu on the Neva * Porcelain city pictured on delph Sunny rooftops with icy necklaces Fragile, hidden in the mind’s imagination Fairy land of winter palaces Snow-dusted dome’s reincarnation Chosen like Alph in olden days Frozen like delph in golden glaze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NOTE Saint Petersburg, Russia, is a combination of Venice’s canals and the fabulous buildings of Samarkand and Asia, more breathtaking than Paris, more cultured than Florence. *Many references in the poem are from Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”. Instead of the sacred River Alph, SPB is on the River Neva, and the city was conceived by Peter the Great.