125
Hammer, sickle and the Italian star
newly adorn the hall. But how much suffering
went into that emblem on that wall!
Enter, propped up on crutches, the Prologue.
He gives a clenched-fist salute; he speaks his lines
to get a laugh from the women and children
who throng the cheap stalls.
Still shy, he speaks of the ideal
that brings their hearts together, ending: ‘And now
I’ll do what the Germans do – make myself scarce.’
In the interval, in the cellar, there goes round,
frugally reddening glasses, the best friend
of man, which heals his wounds,
closes his painful scars; someone who’s come
here from fearful exile warms himself
upon it like a cold man in the sun.
This is the Teatro degli Artigianelli,
as the poet saw it in
nineteen forty-four, on a
September day, when sporadically
the cannon still roared, and Florence
was quiet, self-absorbed in her ruins.