Luckily the sun isn't out and the snow will lie on the ground fully several days more, but meanwhile the sun must be sure to stay in, for the least tongue of heat would lick it away, this infantile flurry of two nights ago, akin to frail moths instead of real snow: and Italians who've been out of jobs for a year will be out of jobs for another or two unless they can urge this thin crust to last through wits bent to guile and hands to deceit, as they do with such infinite artistry by using their picks like engravers a pen in etching faint patterns on durable stone, or converting their shovels to garden spades exquisitely dreading the hurt they might deal to tiny invisible early spring flowers by charging, instead of caressing the snow, with wild swooping gestures from operas: as it is, there's truly no soil down below, but sidewalks meant for pedestrians and the road between scarce three strides across for slow moving vehicles, cars once an hour, mules, a horse or two, donkeys and dogs -- (it's the road to the Alps of high Svizzera, and down to the south and Milano beyond) -- and a few little paths, the important in town, like the one to the steamer which must be kept free, for don't those smooth floats, those elegant swans keep us in touch with the rest of the lake? -- from the bottom, Arona, to top-most Locarno, and Intra, Stresa, Laveno between? -- as well as the paths to the principal shops, the grocer's, the chemist's, of course the town hall, not to speak of that den, most important of all, the cafe where gossip is cheaper than air -- how I love to gossip, I'm gadding astray, would have almost forgotten what further to say, did I not behold those artisans now frankly leaning on shovels and chinning their picks like Victor Emmanuel, elbow on sword -- (one sees him on pedestals posing aloft, usurping the very best square of each town -- if a town has a statue and only one square, it's Italy's first king brooding there!) Loafing on jobs brings food in abundance, the longer one's labour, the higher one's pay, and the richer, more varied the talk which ensues -- commonplace spun round the ends of the earth -- the sooner the moment the snow, lying flat or in harmless small mounds, will change deftly to ice. If the sun should emerge, be it only a peep, a knife down each heart would drive fatally deep, and the bobbing about of those late actor-folk, statues made animate, puppets alive, would be something as poignant as men stricken low straining and squirming for strength to exist: for the ice that was snow into water will run, talk will be hushed, and the gestures and all the scheming and guile and the brave deceit ride off on the stream to oblivion: there'll be frantic attempts to catch water on shovels, toss treacherous fluid on top of snow-carts, and this won't be funny, ironic or droll, but many a body clutching many a soul. The blue which they cherish, pray to or eye will be utterly dismal, hateful as black; were it only a chink that appears in the sky through a wee interstice where clouds crack awry, it'll mean that dread furnace and crater, the sun, must undo the soft pity the clouds had begun -- (those clouds gathered rain and stored it until the winds cooled their breaths and breathed thereupon -- exotic these winters create their first snow and give such Italians their jobs down below): but let that mad sun press one look through a hole, the hole will tear open as wide as a sea, the clouds driven off by an avalanched blue, and the stream that was ice into torrents will speed, dragging human hopes with it with inhuman greed, and this will be tragic, the defeat of a goal, be many a body bereft of its soul! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A NEGRO LOVE SONG by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 16 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING FOURTH BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 16 by THOMAS CAMPION SPRING SOWS HER SEEDS: NINETEEN EIGHTEEN by MARY CAROLYN DAVIES |