Return to Florence
by Geoffrey Grigson
A theatre-sky, of navy blue, at night:
traffic of the night, it darts, it screams,
it is straight swifts of night with lighted
eyes: upwards I read on a new building’s
Face, Here P.B. Shelley wrote
Ode to the West Wind. Your poet, no. Nor
mine, yet saw wind as he will or wind,
oh, I say willkommen, welcome, ben-
Venuto, oh, bienvenu; and I—I am
here again, after fourteen years: I-you.
I-you shall in a minute see the Duomo’s
domino sides enormous up into the night,
I-you shall past our latteria stroll—there,
that corner ship where, look–for your
sake—the kind man scented my hair. Soon
must Il Bianco come into view,
The Loggia lighted, Dante again in the night,
reading, on walls. I-you. Sleeping. To swifts
of morning tomorrow waking. Dead and to come,
oh, welcome, willkommen, benvenuti, oh, bienvenus!
PHOTO: Florence, Italy, by pitinan, used by permission.
POETRY and PLACES 