COMPOSITION FOR WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Snowbound    the Gran Sasso    high
        above Pietracamela
                diagonally downward
across the Abruzzi
        past Montecassino to
                Southern Italy
the Autostrada del Sole
        pulls
                finally stumbles into
Napoli.
 

One follows the others.
        My Williams (William Carlos)
                his Brueghel (now mine) The Elder
The Parable of the Blind
        all in motion
                caught
composed
        stick, or brush, or pen in hand
                interminable
downward
        dragged
                into the bog.

Sunny Napoli lined
        in haze
                noise, Fiats broken
bags of garbage
        children eating
                lovers groping
eruption all
        in the shadows
                of an evening.

Neapolitans, restless
their faces raised as toward the light . . . .
Someday Vesuvio again
Pompei (once glorious) again
ashes stuffing the mouth.

        Ruins:           colonnades, porticoes
                            forums and casas
                            stradas.

All
        follow
                    the others.

Ruins, exquisite ruins in peace
        reconstructed in
                cavernous alleys
of cinder and stone
        composed
                in heat, smoke, fire
-- an Italian noon.

The Museo di Capodimonte sits high
and silent, cool in its park.

Brueghel's painting, implacable,
its grim humor, fearful;
our eyes dragged into lines
        moving down, across
                the canvas
the light somewhere above, behind,
        beyond
                in the distance.

Even planned for -- known in the mind --
the painting surprises the sight,
        dominates
                its wall, its room
                the galleries, the city itself;
framed by its vision
        eyes find themselves
                sucked into the bog.

Later, rounding Sorrento to the Amalfi coast,
fixed to the wheel of the car,
                more or less without nerves,
        even keeping
                to my side of the line,
there is no guarantee
        against
                            buses, trucks, semis, people.

Still . . .
we drive fiercely down.

        (Death
                if it came fast
                                or slowly floating . . . down
        interminable,
                on parachutes
                        forever . . .
        past Positano perhaps,
                cliffbound
                        clear in its late afternoon light . . .
        finally time
                                rest
                                                sight.)

It's all
        in the driving
                of the driven.

South of Salerno finally
        the smog clears
                traffic thins
the road comes to the shore.

At Paestum we camp
            in the evening we sleep
            in the morning we swim
                        we float in the beautiful sea:
 

(impossible ! ! there . . .
on the beach, soldiers appear,
twigs in their helmets
leaves in their hair,
        red bands blue
        armies, war
        games, machine
        guns in their hands,
        cradled they play
        with their mortars and
        tanks, bazookas and jeeps;

                                all framed by the sand.)

Ruins: machines, lines, rules, columns and streets.
Ruins, exquisite ruins,
glorious temples here:
        in Paestum
        Rome in its time
        Italia . . .
                framed by the ruins

we float
        composed in our eyes
                in our poems
                        we float . . .
 

                                                                        © Anthony Hunt

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