Italian Relatives

Relatives,Mendicino, Italy
July 1985

The Journey

Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down   

A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out

To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.

But far up the mountain, behind the town,   

We too were swept out, out by the wind,   

Alone with the Tuscan grass.

Wind had been blowing across the hills

For days, and everything now was graying gold   

With dust, everything we saw, even

Some small children scampering along a road,   

Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.   

We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,   

And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.

I found the spider web there, whose hinges   

Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,

Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging   

And scattering shadows among shells and wings.   

And then she stepped into the center of air   

Slender and fastidious, the golden hair

Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,   

While ruins crumbled on every side of her.   

Free of the dust, as though a moment before   

She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.

I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped   

Away in her own good time.

Many men

Have searched all over Tuscany and never found   

What I found there, the heart of the light   

Itself shelled and leaved, balancing   

On filaments themselves falling. The secret

Of this journey is to let the wind   

Blow its dust all over your body,

To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly

All the way through your ruins, and not to lose

Any sleep over the dead, who surely   

Will bury their own, don't worry.

James Wright

via The Poetry Foundation