5:00 a.m.

Always nice to have a poem show up in your inbox. This is from a professor friend who recently returned from Orvieto, Italy, home base for the Gordon in Orvieto program, which recently moved its digs from one convent to another (if you can read Italian, here’s a local account of the move: http://www.orvietosi.it/notizia.php?id=12494) :

Orvieto 11 . 8 . 2007

breath of your umbrian valley is always rising along these cliff walls
carrying the scent of charcoal fire and baking bread,
source of life here, along with oil, pasta,
and wine
 
pattern of olive groves and vineyards crossing themselves
in reverence, all grow in this ancient green-gray soil (offering
its life to them, never exhausted
in giving)
 
street-stones fan-like, outstretched to receive our feet and wheels
yield sounds that have echoed in these alleys for ages,
etched with each washing and wearing, black like
Etruscan pottery
 
duomo, your crown, surprises me each time I round a street expecting
more of your cadenced rooflines to frame my vision,
yet finding that jewel instead, its face pressed against the night’s
velvet sky
 
your people are like you, parochial yet magnanimous, small but expanding
always to include the stranger who once laid siege your walls,
seeking to steal what is freely offered to one in need
(like me)

Bruce Herman