"Italian Pictures"
[Summer 1914]
Part Two: The Costa San Giorgio We English make a tepid blot On the messiness Of the passionate Italian life-traffic Throbbing the street up steep Up up to the porta Culminating In the stained frescoe of the dragon-slayer The hips of women sway Among the crawling children they produce And the church hits the barracks Where The greyness of marching men Falls through the greyness of stone Oranges half-rotten are sold at a reduction Hoarsely advertised as broken heads BROKEN HEADS and the barber Has an imitation mirror And Mary preserve our mistresses from seeing us as we see ourselves Shaving ICE CREAM Licking is larger than mouths Boots than feet Slip Slap and the string dragging And the angle of the sun Cuts the whole lot in half And warms the folded hands Of a consumptive Left outside her chair is broken And she wonders how we feel For we walk very quickly The noonday cannon Having scattered the neighbour's pigeons The smell of small cooking From luckier houses Is cruel to the maimed cat Hiding Among the carpenter's shavings From three boys — One holding a bar — Who nevertheless Born of human parents Cry when locked in the dark Fluidic blots of sky Shift among roofs Between bandy legs Jerk patches of street Interrupted by clacking Of all the green shutters From which Bits of bodies Variously leaning Mingle eyes with the commotion For there is little to do The false pillow-spreads Hugely initialed Already adjusted On matrimonial beds And the glint on the china virgin Consummately dusted Having been thrown Anything or something That might have contaminated intimacy OUT Onto the middle of the street Part Three: Costa Magic Her father Indisposed to her marriage And a rabid man at that My most sympathetic daughter Make yourself a conception As large as this one Here But with yellow hair From the house Issuing Sunday dressed Combed precisely SPLOSH Pours something Viscuous Malefic Unfamiliar While listening up I hear my husband Mumbling Mumbling Mumbling at the window Malediction Incantation Under an hour Her hand to her side pressing Suffering Being bewitched Cesira fading Daily daily feeble softer The doctor Phthisis The wise woman says to take her So we following her instruction I and the neighbour Take her — The glass rattling The rain slipping I and the neighbour and her aunt Bunched together And Cesira Droops across the cab Fields and houses Pass like the pulling out Of sweetmeat ribbon From a rascal's mouth Till A wheel in a rut Jerks back my girl on the padding And the hedges into the sky Coming to the magic tree Cesira becomes as a wild beast A tree of age If Cesira should not become as a wild beast It is merely Phthisis This being the wise woman's instruction Knowing she has to die We drive home To wait She certainly does in time It is unnatural in a Father Bewitching a daughter Whose hair down covers her thighs |
Costa San Giorgio 54, Florence, Italy.
Mina Loy's studio and main residence while in Florence. Costa San Giorgio and Via di Belvedere crossing point
Porta San Giorgio. A "frescoe of the dragon-slayer." Costa S. Giorgio 32, San Giorgio alla Costa
"the church" Via di S. Leonardo 1, Forte di Belvedere.
"the barracks" |