Florence

 April 17 Word of the Day: Florence

 

Where does the day go, and the night

David’s already said goodbye

No flights out and, in fact, no flights

Churches declare the reason why.

 

David already waved goodbye

Gaze on his marble flesh no more.

Churches declare the reasons why

Santa Croce forlorn at morn.

 

No gazing on those supple forms

Again, and ingrained imagine

Santa Croce at dawn forlorn.

We’ll not behold their likeness again.

 

Again and again he imagined

Dante, he knew, never went back.

We will not see his like again

His great plans all done and dusted.

 

Dante, you know, never went back,

Self-isolated in his cell.

All the planes are done and dusted

Only shells of their former selves.

 

Self-isolated in our cells

We have the words, we have the snaps

Only shells of their former selves

Those schemes, vacations, dreams and dares.

 

We have the words, we have the naps.

Where does the day go, and the night

In dreams of vacant doors and squares.

No flights out and in. Fact: No flights.

 

[August 2020 & April 2026]

 In online poetry group during lockdown, as an exercise I invited members to write a poem about a city that they currently could not visit: “The poem can go anywhere. It can be descriptive. Memories may fill the poem. Longing to return is possibly at work. By imagining the city then and now and even in the future, you play with one of poetry’s strongest devices, which is tense. The reader is left with a strong sense of the city.” I chose the pantoum and wrote three poems for the group (Florence, Jerusalem, Tokyo) in August 2020, which are released here, with little alteration, in April 2026.