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CIOTOLI – D.S. Butterworth, American poet, fiction and essay author, professor of creative writing and literature at Gonzaga University collaborates with Florence Newspaper
D.S. Butterworth, American poet, fiction and essay author is professor of creative writing and literature at Gonzaga, Spokane. His work Waiting for the Rain was published by Algonquin Books.
Orphean
Colored wheels of whirligigs rise
against Republica’s arch
where the soprano sings Torna A Sorrento
and the jangling of hammer
dulcimer from the gypsy jazz
band and the streetsweeper
send a roar against the buildings
and the carousel lights revolve
horses around the inner ear of the piazza.
As the waiter works the bicycle chain
back on the spindle for the bella donna
and the Carabinieri harass Senegalesi street merchants,
it’s the fire dancer who answers the question
who we are and where, or why we are
and what it matters: spume of dust
flaming out in the ghost of the old ghetto’s
shadow. But only down Via Roma
will the conditions of our mortality
become clear, where the ciotoli artist
measures the forehead of a goddess
in centimeters, the distance from eye
to ear rubbed into pavement stone
where we are the grains of a crayon smear,
the chalk dust of our being
peeled like the flesh of sycamores,
ribbons blown beyond the piazza—
find love, find love spore fluff offers
in dry drizzle-fall from the canopy,
fawn umbrellas parachuting like snow
over Piazza Massimo D’Azeglio
and colors of confetti along Via Della Colonna
fade to the same dun as, glancing back,
Eurydice entered falling into Orpheus’s memory
a second time, the way Florence does now,
the old palazzo rising against a bowl
of terra cotta, Miniata swimming like Jupiter’s
moon through Galileo’s telescope,
the tides of the city rushing past the homeless
man whose rant, brittle as broken wine,
echoes in the loggia
where some vain Medici rides a bronze horse
against the uncertain composition of the sky.
Lifestyle, Arts and Entertainment - a7.08.07.10.53
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