San Cresci
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Four people are sketching him in the heat of a Tuscan afternoon to the cicadas’ rusted scream, testa di fanciullo, beloved son,
as the wind sighs through the ilex up from the Mugello valley, and otherwise silence abets the varying skills of hand and eye,
their concentration, in its leisure: and I am breathless with it too, for he will leave me soon, but not before I betray those who betray him so.
I will not show them the cracked lapis of his gaze: they must not ascertain how deep my complicity is, in this beautiful almost-man;
they must not see, as I have done, the infinite disillusionment, the broken smile that is his own childhood apparently without comfort,
and all too late to fix the wound, even if I could cut it off, this sinister and writing hand, lamed as it is by my lame love. [End Page 80]
Karl Kirchwey’s sixth book of poems Mount Lebanon (Marion Wood Books / Putnam’s) appeared in Spring 2011, as did his translation of Paul Verlaine’s first book as Poems Under Saturn (Princeton University Press). Professor of the Arts at Bryn Mawr College, he is serving as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome from 2010–2013.
