2

 
The high-strung Tuscans with their mimic battles...
elmora, battaglia di sassi, fist fights.
They make a game of it - Mary, local saints
watch from the bleachers.  The contest settles

 
everything.  600 years of symbolic
clan warfare - ghost dance, sacred epilepsy,
scandal summoned to the pitch of travesty.
O these infinite recurrent mirror-wars

 
of rival caballeros!  They make a pageant play
feud pay to winnow dry resentment and contempt
blooded with animal names.  Trumpets,
drums, neighborhood flags!  Oh say

 
can you see - the heart writhes
with parochial devotions - paces
its cage.  An eagle plummets - laces
the sky with lilies, oak-leaves - scythes

 
earth from heaven.  At that borderline
a frozen San Francesco stands in the sun
(collateral for all the vanity of Mammon).
He sheds his clothes... a simple sign.

                            
                 *

 
The star of poetry rides with the bedouins
out of somewhere east of Somalia, near
Sheba's Eden - pursues the chanticleer
Etruscans (smiling from sand dunes

 
of Rome, from their tombs in the hills)
to vortex of contrada-nonsense -
meticulous hubbub of impious Sienese.
A candle burns the purple from their quills.