Italian Poem No 9.

      

Molino Revisited 

"Here's the place!" I say.
We stop the car 
and from the grassy verge

look just below us in the valley
where an aged limestone building squats,
an old beret of terracotta tiles
pulled on its head.
It has green shutters
at the upper window where,
so many years ago, I slept.
The millstream curves around
and though the wheel
is long since gone
some nights
you wake to hear
a rhythmic thundering
and a churning sound
as though this building has a heart.
The millstream ripples by
and by that stream
tall poplars grow.
They are the spreading sort
and in the spring
the air is full of golden down
and by the stream
a swing is moving gently to and fro.
One can sit dreaming
in the dappled light
and hear the rippling tune of water
gliding over stones.
And through the open shutters
in the night
it plays continuo
while the nightingale
sings its sonata sweet
and softly to the darkness.

In the morning bright

the cuckoo calls
with joyful, childish repetition
of his two-note song
and round the ancient archway
to the kitchen door
wisteria climbs,
and in those blooms
are bumblebees
so large
that they could carry you away
if they had need to,
but they're busy.
In my mind I see
Louise
in dress of faded crimson
wading in meadow grass
and golden haze,
picking a sheaf of poppies
and some daisies
and some heads of wheat.
They're for the big blue jug
without a handle
on the breakfast table,
with the crusty loaf
and soft white cheese
and steaming milk
and fresh ground coffee.
How I love this place!
We turn away
and start the engine
for today
we must press on to Venice.

© Tamsyn Taylor,

Italian poem No 5.

Liberty

The eyes of David,
the eternal vigilante,

warn the approaching tourist
from beneath their jutting brow.
Stone cold flesh
glows palely in the sunlight.
Herakles is pausing for a moment
before he murders Cacus
and not far away
Judith, the Queen of Israel,
slits the throat
of one Holofernes,
while on his almost-Nouveau pedestal
the hero Perseus
holds up the frightful head
of the Medusa.
Thus of old
did Florence put on show
intolerance of tyrants!
Rising up before me,
brick on brick
and crowned with battlements and mighty tower
stands the Palazzo Vecchio,
home of the republic.
Slowly
I pan my camera up the building-
just beneath the cornice is a row of shields,
and on each shield, an emblem.
Holding still, I zoom the image
and I read the word
"LIBERTAS"
proclaimed in letters gold
against an azure field.  

That night 

at Barbara's cosy pensione 

I play my movie back, 

and it is there! 

I hear it every time; 

the voices coincide 

exactly, 

just as if I wrote a script! 

Above the general noises of the square, 

so faint and far away and yet so clear 

I hear a man's voice shouting, fierce and free- 

"Libertas!" 

it cries 

and then again, 

pale as an echo and more high and wild 

a woman's voice cries 

"Libertas!"  

©Tamsyn Taylor 

 Picture: CC. Georges Jansoone, 2005, from Wikimedia Commons