Il Casentino / Jessica Dessner
No time for discovery
without love of earthly things
half way there
hills press mystically into
annuntiare, young chestnuts
in a slight enthusiasm of musky honey
dead east from Florence
a lichen on the map
we spare weakness
at the porcini restaurant
half full, boar ragu to share
with a road crew
drunk on signs
could a boar tear through?
the soul widens for all pines
scattered with sheep
softly abandoned cascina
yesterday’s austerity
stucco for the scorpions’ document
Brave the curves, roll up the windows
August two storms in one week, a trick
when not the dessicated gold
of sentimental fields going light
right up to the fence
Tuscan greens are Corot’s
as if powdered
the difference here
wet off the Adriatic
green lacquered black
at the forest birth of the Arno
not much to that first watery pulse
over an agony of pebbles
The farm country kicks out
where the land was left
to improvise fir and beech
timber to scaffold the Duomo
ships for the Medici war views
and competing pamphlets for most
ancient European lack of brambles
forest health speaks for Benedictine ideals
forester monks to clear the dead wood
a thousand years ago San Romualdo
scaled a million choking
leaf litters not suitable
for Camaldoli heaven, in eremo
he thinned the primeval jumble
now a disturbing charm
to the beech after beech
I never guessed enchantment
was the work of an axe
Whose silhouette on the plaque
Paolo Uccello nato a Pratovecchio 1397
to a barber-surgeon, two tasks for the razor
who can resist action in the vanishing point?
I’ll check on the Hunt to return here later
a mostly leafy talisman for the hounds’ way
in then up Apennine slopes, volumes
working green wholesale into every instance
Through the windshield, elation
for the poor sinner in sight
of today’s Romanesque surface
stone oddities on capitals
proportional to your cramp of delight
the dimness in Pieve di San Pietro a Romena
has a divine theme, tests the measure
of my belief’s fitness, get thee behind me
Satan, everything I’ve learned through desire
makes my doubt proficient
On its cliff, the crescent moon of La Verna
I’d like to remove the hermitage roof
see the fits of motionless order
we pray apprehensively
in the grotto of St. Francis
lest stigmata appear in our ideas
Pratovecchio Centro Storico
shape of an eye
I hear the kids talk of leaving
but the markets’ heartbreaking lettuce, tomatoes
for sugo di pomodoro, non mangiare
senza cottura, the red a comedy
of surplus, zuchinni
so engaged with provincial life
they grow a foot in three days
Heat packs in under the portico
the original mom-and-pop shops
old men, some fresh, some prone to break
in sempiternal card games everyone in resilient
disagreement, the town in tact
sons, daughters, the whir of the slicer
Giubbino Alimentari for paper thin
salame al finochietto, gone
before I understand it’s made here
a sticky schiacciata con l’uva
the grapes improve you over time
Roll call in the piazza, crows
dive for scraps under the roses
we find a bench
panini and espresso, no pretension
to tourist sputter, no Duccio
Michelangelo in the background
and not the finest hot rods
to go with asymmetrical bastardo hair gel
girls’ short shorts nocciola frappes hand in hand
with signs of Dante’s exile to wilderness
I guess it was here he turned his back
toward Florence and wept
though the stars return brightly
as if remembered
Click to hear Jessica Dessner speak about Il Casentino.
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