Whoever Heard of Surging Love in Holland?

Whoever Heard of Surging Love in Holland?

Can deep romance occur in boring, flat

Terrain?   Not even in Italian fields

With cypress trees, tight shapes, can hearts combat

The boredom of a sort that never yields

The passion that romance requires.  No notes

Of music can arise in landscapes made

Like these.  Where cricket chirping, merely, floats,

A Montague turns out to be homemade;

A Capulet? a country girl unknown.

A nowhere town near Venice, plain without

A gondola, land ploughed with barley sown,

Is not where velvet valentines can shout.

  You take the wrong train and you have to change

    In Dolo — where any glamor is strange.

Phillip Whidden