This Tuscan city quiet in Firenze shadow 

No calamitous invasion, but subdued

By forty thousand gold and silver scudos

And Cosimo bought the title of Grand Duke 

 

It's background hum turned low on this the lord's day

A best dressed yawning Sunday morning town

The bell towers' mass cacophony crescendoing

Hammer and anvil out all gentler sound

 

Prosecco pops and glasses chink to celebrate,

Baptismal feasts in vaulted Vasirian shade

Children shriek their endless hide and seeking

Let It Be wafts over Piazza Grande

 

The bussle fades at Passeggio del Pratto, 

A hill top rustling, shady, tranquil lair

The bird song in the leaning trees upstaging

Duomo faithful offering up their prayer

 

Museumed portals, columns, ghostly silent 

No tinkling flow in aqueduct remains

An empty cry from statues barely standing 

The silent stone of architecture graves 

 

Frescos mute when once they spoke so strident

Blank faces mouth a long dead Latin creed

Madonna keeps the silence of god's secret

Improbable stories fall upon deaf ears

 

In medieval streets a dreadful whining

Reverberating, shrill pneumatic crush

A clattering on ribbed and chiselled paving 

Car horns quash the city's Sunday hush. 

 

GMJ May 2017