capomaestri (1)
for John Blakeley
(Il Duomo, Firenze, 1980)
Now our monuments are
the rising sweep of freeways
the arch of bridges glittering
dividing the waters
from the waters.
By the side of the bay
with spatter of rain on river wall
one is on the city’s brink
yet divided from its paradise.
Standing on ranked steps
a visitor to the city
is framed in insignificance
by the Porta della Mandorla
as pigeons flutter and descend.
Once again one is at another city’s brink;
facing a city outwards
full of money tables of merchants
and thin gypsy arms outstretched.
And at one’s back the other city
also denied, full of strange tongues
to the opened senses dark;
showing swart columns
and the chosen’s tremulous chants.
Turned again one’s downcast eyes
see on marble of these battered steps
not only angled shadow
of the master builder’s lines,
but on that same stained stone,
under feet of pilgrims
blood of the unbelieving,
burnt offerings of heretics
and the living city’s shifting dust.
Then evening comes with rain
to smear centuries’ graffiti;
bell tower and baptistry cast
deeper shadows, etching glittering walls.
Stepping in the darkness upward
one feels in the shadows,
with foot out-thrust,
old questings, old presumptions
on the temple steps.
1. The Capomaestri were the great master builder/architects of the
Renaissance, responsible for major cathedral building projects.
Glen Phillips
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