Campo di Fiori

In Rome on the Campo di Fiori

Baskets of olives and lemons,

Cobbles spattered with wine

And the wreckage of flowers.

Vendors cover the trestles

With rose-pink fish;

Armfuls of dark grapes

Heaped on peach-down.

On this same square

They burned Giordano Bruno.

Henchmen kindled the pyre

Close-pressed by the mob.

Before the flames had died

The taverns were full again,

Baskets of olives and lemons

Again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori

In Warsaw by the sky-carousel

One clear spring evening

To the strains of a carnival tune.

The bright melody drowned

The salvos from the ghetto wall,

And couples were flying

High in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning

Would driff dark kites along

And riders on the carousel

Caught petals in midair.

That same hot wind

Blew open the skirts of the girls

And the crowds were laughing

On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral

That the people of Rome or Warsaw

Haggle, laugh, make love

As they pass by martyrs' pyres.

Someone else will read

Of the passing of things human,

Of the oblivion

Born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only

Of the loneliness of the dying,

Of how, when Giordano

Climbed to his burning

There were no words

In any human tongue

To be left for mankind,

Mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine

Or peddled their white starfish,

Baskets of olives and lemons

They had shouldered to the fair,

And he already distanced

As if centuries had passed

While they paused just a moment

For his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely

Forgotten by the world,

Our tongue becomes for them

The language of an ancient planet.

Until, when all is legend

And many years have passed,

On a great Campo dci Fiori

Rage will kindle at a poet's word.