A Simple Question

Whose piazza is this anyway, he mutters

and flicks his cigarette into

the early morning shadows.

If someone were to answer, he'd prefer

that it be the Holy Father

or D'Alema, someone with enough pull

to proclaim that these cobblestones

casting off their blue cloaks in

the sunlight, that the Egyptian needle,

and those crumbling masks of plaster-

the bar, the bank, the temple-

are all his. Just as the chariot tracks

buried twenty feet below are now

the final and exclusive property of

the moles of this city. But,

as usual, the city must take time

to consider: the piazza no longer

belongs to Umberto I who is sleeping

forever in his vault in the temple,

nor to the kid playing "Miss American Pie"

on his guitar by the fountain.

Nor is the piazza the rightful inheritance

of Bernini's baby dolphins who are

beginning their daily mantra of gurgles,

or of the pigeons who dirty the water.

The walls of the buildings glow

with the day's fire and a gust

sweeps the ground, fanning the flames.

The only one who might put up a fight

is the strega with a tongue like

a knife. She descends from her flat

under the eaves and crosses the square

like a general from the Risorgimento -

scarf, red apron, and cane, and

ready to rap up the side of the head

any man over seventy-five who left her

behind in the village fifty years ago.

She is living an oath to find each

one of them. And so, the men stiffen now

like the columns of the temple

and slowly inch their way back

into the shadows, swallowing their own

edginess, their simple question.

The piazza, they have been heard

to whisper. Oh hell, you can have it.