As midnight tolled its long count
our host Stefano tumbled down
into the oleander plants
around the border of the lawn
Valley dogs were barking
as we pulled him from the fiori,
laughing and unspectacled.
We offered our grazie mille
then left by separate ways
diverging from the lantern light
into the spark-peppered dark
of a new-moon summer night.
Feeling for the crumbled asphalt
with the soles of wandering shoes
I recalled Maria’s warning
of fierce cinghiali sows.
At an unremembered bend,
which may have curled to home
or the dereliction of a ditch,
a chariot of fireflies came
to carry me high and waving
like a flag of well, whatever…
over olives, figs and walnuts,
down from the wild Maiella
to the tattered edge of town
where leathery lucciole
wait for secret charioteers;
the depot where Giuseppe
works early morning shifts
before tending to his nursery
of aubergines and peppers;
the broken-windowed factories
empty by the autostrada;
the seaside conurbation
sleeping for a sunny day;
then back over corrugations
of coppi, to set me down swirly
at my door. How many it took
to fly a drunk I can’t say for sure
they’d gone before I looked
but this I know my clothes were torn
my shoes were in a dreadful state
– you let the fireflies guide you home
and this’ll be the price you pay.
