FLORENCE BY PROXY

October’s ochre changes

everything to Italy.

Sunpainted

walls remember villas

from Fiesole.

I’ve never seen

Fiesole.

Someday I will,

and it will seem a memory

of noon in the United States

when I became a Florentine

because the sun bewildered me.

Who among the Florentines

is listening?

Who else but me

who sees in the Italians

“the human race” that Goethe

saw…

Today their cops

are commodore; their Fiats,

weapons in their whizzing duels

on the road; their shoes and gloves,

the very renaissance of calf.

Tribal to the death, they swear

by their mothers, breastfeed

their sons wherever, prefer

their pasta three-fourths cooked,

and sing whatever, whenever…

Mistaken for Italian half

my life, I’m of the tribe.

If it’s Italian to speak

in tears before goodbyes,

I qualify.

If it’s Italian

to choose tomatoes one

by one, I qualify.

If it’s

Italian to laugh when no one

else is laughing or to whistle

at the wheel, I qualify.

One

murmur in Italian soothes

the Florentine in me that French

confuses, German contradicts,

and Spanish misses by a hair.

One murmur, and I feel

what Goethe felt when Florence

wounded him with Italy

for life though Goethe spent

not quite three hours there.

Download PDF