WEBVTT

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This is a poem called
"Italian Days."

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And it has a lot of
Italian place names in it.

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If you haven't been to Italy,
it will mean totally zip to you.

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But they sound good, you know?

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You should let them just
wash over you and think, god,

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I've got to go there too.

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It sounds so good or whatever.

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But ultimately, as the
writers always say,

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the poem doesn't depend on that.

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The poem depends
on the relationship

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between the line I have between
the heaven, the fixed stars,

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and the page here.

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But in any case, it does
have something to do--

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[LAUGHTER]

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It does have something
to do with the location.

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But they're very nice names.

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And if you were ever
23 once or 24, or 25,

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or if you ever hoped to get
that age, listen closely.

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"Italian Days."

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Thinking again of a
weekend trip to Ferrara,

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Cosimo Tura on one wall, Miss
d'Este long gone from the next,

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I took from Verona once, a place
where the streets were as wide

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as Parisian boulevard, the
pole like a frayed rope out

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past the bulge of the dikes.

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The weekend before, I'd
been to Merano and back,

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and almost become a squib
in the Stars and Stripes

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when the helicopter's engine
stopped thousands of feet

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above the Brenner highway.

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And we began to slide sideways
down the air as quietly

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as a snowflake.

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The huge rotary blades above
us circling like paddle

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turns in the wind languidly.

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The stillness abrupt, the plane
in a long slip like a scimitar

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curve toward the ground
rising to meet us,

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its trees focusing automatically
larger with each look as though

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raised through a microscope.

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The engine catching at
last on its last turn.

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Pine branches less
than 50 feet below us.

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The blade slide bottoming out
as we started to rise and swing

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north up the Val d'Adige
and into the emerald sundown

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outside Merano.

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Back up out of
darkness an hour later,

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the houses beginning
to flash on like

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matches below, left over Trento
and left over Schio and down.

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Everyone out to
supper, the waitress

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admonishing Manzolin,
"non si taglia la pasta."

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Cut to Ferrara, and me
threading my way out of town

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through bicycles,
Vespas and runty Fiats

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south to Ravenna and Rimini, the
lap of the Adriatic and western

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Byzantium, in the long grasses
of S. Apollinare in Classe,

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the field stubble
gold in the noon sun.

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Cut to Verona, the town
I always left from,

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work over and happy hour,
Modugno on every phonograph

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on Via Mazzini, "ciao,
ciao, bambina..."

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It's 1959, and after supper,
everyone disappearing like rain

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from the streets and
Caffé Dante, the fog in,

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Can Grande skulking
and disappearing

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in marble above his tomb as
I do along the cobblestones

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he grins down on.

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Gone through the fog toward
Santa Anastasia and the Due

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Torri, everything swaddled
as though in newsprint.

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The river off to the right
like a licking sound.

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Up past the Duomo than right
across the last bridge where

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the beggar loomed in
her burning chair.

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Each night as I passed
her, it took 100 lire

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to put out the fire.

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Up north in the watersheds and
rock slides of the Dolomites,

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snow has been leaving
its same message

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for thousands of years on
the bark of the cedar trees.

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There's no stopping the comings
and goings in this world.

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No stopping them to and fro.

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Palladio's buildings shone like
the collar on someone's dog

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in Vicenza, the only
inscript in all the town.

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For the rest, it was Goldstein
patrolling the avenues

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at sundown with hot hands.

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And Venezia, lord of the
bees, and the dark halves

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of the Hotel Artù
with hot hands.

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It was Charles with hot hands,
his fingers on this and that

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wherever he turned in the
bars of Little America.

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It was weekend and
off duty and kicking

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the gong in a foreign country,
left foot and right foot.

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Sister water, brother
fire, gentle my way across,

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one foot on the river,
one foot in the flames.

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My lack of ability
to remember it right.

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The time we spotted the
Vicentine, for instance,

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it rained and dimpled all the
way back, with Grace in his lap

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and him driving, sneezing,
and making amends.

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On alternate Sundays, we'd
drive to Soave and Asolo, Padova

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and the Euganean Hills,
always looking for the event,

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not knowing that we were it.

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This was the world we lived
in and couldn't get shut of.

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And these were the rocks we
walked on, Milano, Certosa,

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footstep after footstep,
echoing down the galleries.

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Goldstein checking the nuns out.

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Venezia settling like smoke at
the unbitten center of things.

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One Sunday after the
Trattoria La Brera,

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we went to Scuderi's place.

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His huge canvases stacked like
sheet rock against the wall.

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I have to keep
them like this, he

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said, to keep my life in order.

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He died the next winter,
the heater electrocuting him

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in the bathtub.

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Some nights when the stars
flash their gang codes

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and the fog slides
in as cautiously

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as a bride across the steps
the trees make up from the sea,

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and the gnatlight
starts to solidify

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like a crust on the palm
leaf and the pepper switch,

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and the smell of the paper
whites hangs like a June garden

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above the kitchen table,
Scuderi calls out my name

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as I climb the six
flights to his room

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and stand in the doorway again.

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Electric and redivivus
in the world of light

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he lived in inside his
paintings for all those years.

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Vaseline light through the
slow filter of late November.

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Acid light off the
North Italian lakes,

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shorthand of light
from the olive

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leaves as they turn
and tick in the wind.

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Last light of the dopoguerra
lifting Milan like a ship

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in the Lombardy night
outside his window

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on top of the city wall,
bar light and aftermath.

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Scuderi whitening to
grain- out and then

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to blank, light like a
sheet of paper everywhere,

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flat and unwrinkled,
and unreturnable.

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At the end of the
last word, when night

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comes walking across
the lake on its hands

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and nothing appears
in the mirror,

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or has turned to water where
nothing walks or lies down,

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what will your question be?

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Whistling the dogs of
mold in, giving them meat,

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what will it profit you?

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No thought of that back then.

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Bivouacked outside the
castle above Marostica,

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whose walls down swept and
pinioned the town like wings

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in its coming to rest,

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the town square blocked out like
a chessboard, black and white.

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Black and white from up there,
where the rook looked down

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on the knight's play.

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What eschatology of desire
could move us in those days?

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What new episiotomy of the word?

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At San Gimignano,
outside of town,

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I did see that no one
could last for good,

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that no one could answer
back from the other side.

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Still, I'd like to think I've
learned how to speak to them.

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I'd like to think I
know how to conjugate

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"can you hear me" and "what?"

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In Rome on the Via Cassia,
there was opportunity enough

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for that in the catacombs.

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The lost bodies
slipped in their slots

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like letters someone had never
answered, and then tossed out.

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A chance to step
back from the light

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of the strong electric
bulb, and ask again,

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if our first day in the dark
is our comfort or signature.

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Most of what I remember had
nothing to do with any of that,

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it turns out.

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A view from the Pinacoteca
window across Siena one

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morning in 1959, and out to
the hillscapes and olive shine.

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The way Piero della
Francesca's Madonna del Parto

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was leaning against the wall
in Monterchi, and still unlit.

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The eel fisherman that May
twilight along the Mincio

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River.

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But Scuderi did,
and the helicopter

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did, and the full moon like
Borso's skull on the Zaterre,

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fog smoking up from
the humped lagoon.

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And Eve coming out of Adam's rib
on San Zeno's doors in Verona.

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Her foot still
stuck in his side.

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And the morning we sat on
the terrace, Jim Gates,

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and Tom Fucile,
and I, in Bassano,

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the bowler of Monte Grappa
across the valley, ghost hat

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on the head of northern Italy.

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There is, in the orchards
of Sommacampagna,

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a sleet like and
tenuous iridescence

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that falls through the peach
trees whenever it rains.

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The blossoms parachute
to the ground

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so heavy and so distinct.

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And the light above
Riva spokes out

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from under the
clouds like Blake.

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The wires for the grape vines
beading their little rainbows.

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The cars planing
by on the highway,

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shooshing their golden plumes.

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What gifts there are are
all here, in this world.

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