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Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A
steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a
cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind
the town,
We too were swept out, out by the
wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.
Wind had
been blowing across the hills
For days, and
everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything
we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a
road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged
bird.
We sat beside them to rest in some
brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from
my face.
I found the spider web there, whose
hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the
dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it,
sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and
wings.
And then she stepped into the center of
air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of
daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While
ruins crumbled on every side of her.
Free of the
dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped
inside the earth, to bathe herself.
I gazed,
close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her
own good time.
Many men
Have searched all over
Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart
of the light
Itself shelled and leaved,
balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The
secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its
dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to
step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins,
and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who
surely
Will bury their own, don't worry.
James Wright
Read poems
about / on: wind,
journey,
children,
hair,
sleep,
alone,
light,
lost,
child
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James Wright 
Free Poetry E-Book: 31 poems of
James Wright
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