Siege of White
BY CYRUS CASSELLS
After Pavese
The immense white morning blossoms
into a spacious silence, muffling
the workaday voices of passersby.
In this handsome metropolis, the dawn haze
fuses every element of standstill green,
every forest-tinted syllable.
Even the wine in this punch-clock kingdom
tastes of fog—
All at once, some bed-less, paperless wanderer,
some empty-bellied pipe dreamer pauses
to imbibe the willow-o’-the-wisp air
as if it were a hearty
swallow of invigorating grappa.
Whether you’re semi-starved
or nimbly ensnared
by the sweetest mouth, it’s worth your while
to stroll in this immense, ethereal
siege of white,
feeling your inchoate memories
quicken with each new breath—
Every household facade,
every animal-loved esplanade,
subsumed by marshalling fog,
retains a shiver from the long-ago that instills
a gripping feeling. You can’t shake
this encompassing calm,
rife with pertinent details
(peppery clues, in fact)
from the epoch you first encountered
the jack-in-the-box
of a chatty vesper jay,
a thrilling parapet walk,
or a Holm oak’s light-laden,
salient branches—
When the massive fog veers
from the impressive river’s current,
maybe a scruffy truant forgets,
for a single moment,
his blunt, hardscrabble life—
the flummoxing hurdles
and snapped-in-half promises—
as he dawdles at a weatherworn corner
gauging the prehensile morning air.
It’s worth your while,
the runaway senses and decides,
this weird ad hoc business
of returning—like a regretful
cat’s-paw on a brusque procedural
or the Prodigal Son in the Bible,
even though rough and tumble flight, hegira
from stringent home has left you
forever changed.
