#873 - witness at my parents' wedding

 

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873 

3.146

witness at my parents’ wedding

ekphrastic for Rah Fizelle’s 1928 ‘San Gimignano’ 

in the Hinton Collection at NERAM

valley of shadows 

a hill high sky

these among the gifts he brought 

wounded by the war 

this new tour lands him here 

behind the easel – 

Siena, Toscana

castle of the forest once

thin pencil pines for foreground

one arch and wall 

tidy mud ruts 

furrows and 

some tiles for colour

all of this en plein air

and perhaps today 

you could stand just there, see

San Gimignano, of the towers 

here something Ozymandias – 

slabs of ruin  

their green shadows 

freshly fascist for Signor Fizelle

canvas uninhabited

peasants must have retired from their toil

(they often spoil a picture)

so some trees shine 

as from behind, inside, from where?

it is the artist’s heart

dayglo avant la lettre 

on the sandstone hillslopes

known for saffron, and the golden ham 

Vernaccia de Gimignano

and here’s a cheeky solemn toast 

he must have brought these for the wedding 

that’s a quarter of a century further on 

from this sun fade

the valley falls away to us 

the crops cannot be known 

and in between 

here’s Mussolini hanging 

upside down from the Esso roof

there is a vastness to the past 

though it is mainly gone 

say stylized geometric 

how did he get that Rah?