Future Ship

In Florence: Thinking of the Generations

76 In Florence:Thinking of the Generations The clock indicates the moment . . . but what does eternity indicate? —WaltWhitman This isn’t the city they died in, but another city. This isn’t the light in which they lived, but a different light. A long procession snakes around the Duomo, chanting prayers— silver cups, incense, flutter of clergical silk. gowns of priests swing left, then right, making clappers of their bodies. Someone holds a cross aloft by a thin bronze pole. Minutes ago at the café, a waiter swept up cigarette butts and cellophane, a joker with his gab and quick ripostes. Some flutist struck up Zamfir tunes like a fake Pan. i sipped my drink, watching light decay across the stones of the piazza. i used to thinkTime a vast plane on which everything occurred at once. Not sequence, but distance between events, each separate act a precise locale. Perched on the curb amid gawkers, i’m half drunk, hip-to-hip with schoolgirls and the camera-toting Japanese. if we could step back far enough, we might see history, all of it at once— Like some enormous fresco on a palace wall. if we believe in something long enough, and repeat its rituals over and over and over again, it might become true. Suddenly a phalanx of nuns pours out of a narrow street and passes in a troop before us—does god love only ugly women? 77 Their faces float towards me, rank on rank—bloated, withered, old— but beautiful inside, perhaps, like painted domes. They surge around the cathedral, Brides of Christ Who will blossom in the next world, or the next. But not here, not yet, relentless black river of this one. ...