Michael H. Levin
City of Flowers
(Firenze)
Serene beneath its heart of beating stone
the city stretches and reclines in pleasing
ocher curving lines; spreads its gray paws
upon the piazzas, haunches tucked against
precisely windowed and proportionate facades;
turns—a glint of claws. Secreted daggers
at the Duomo’s doors, Savonarola’s
fierce dark face, edged as an axe,
still cut their saturnine steel ways below
arcades that run from weathered corner frescoes
past slit palace eyes, to the Campanile
lifting itself hand over hand in slender
colonnaded spurts of hope towards heaven.
What caused this nuclear outburst
we can never know, who talk
of grand dukes, Buonarotti, Fra Angelico
the force that remade sight
still volleys, vaulting passionate and hard
down arched percussive halls to where its dwarf
retainers troop—small shuffling bands
on tessellated floors.
Michael H. Levin is the author of the poetry collections Man Overboard (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Watered Colors (Poetica Publishing, 2014). His work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Adirondack Review, and Crosswinds, among other journals and anthologies. Levin works as an environmental lawyer and solar energy developer, and lives in Washington DC. See michaellevinpoetry.com.
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