Even dead he wouldn’t come back
to his old city, his Florence.
He didn’t look back when he left, not this one.
It’s to him that I sing this song.
Night. A torch. One last embrace.
His savage fate howling just outside the door.
He cursed this city from Hell,
and in Heaven itself could not forget her.
But he was not the one to walk about barefoot,
in sackcloth, with a lighted candle
through the Florence that he yearned for—
faithless Florence, mean, for whom he waited long ...
(1936)