Hawker in the Square in Florence - Barry Denny

[Larry Robinson]

Hawker in the Square in Florence

 

If imagination weren’t truth and stories weren’t blueprints

for ways to escape the hawker of Magdalene key rings

haranguing me near the Basilica Santa Maria Novella

in Florence, I would be a grand inquisitor

or architect of holy names.

 

The Cathedral with its Christmas candy facade

would never exist in a universe

where functionality ruled the roost.    

But, yes, this church alive with pigeons—worshippers

and street folks gossiping in the square.

 

Nine hundred years of palaver.

 

The hawker, a young black man, wearing a brocaded fez

speaks English, but will not hear my words,

No bro’ my friend, fly away, leave me be.

 

He replies his wife is pregnant and sick

with three kids in Senegal.

 

Liar, liar pants on fire.

 

He grabs my wrist.

No, not very hard.

His hands are calloused,

poverty and determination deep-set in his eyes.

 

If stories weren’t emeralds,

if flesh wasn’t temporal,

mercenaries in armor would obliterate

verbs with state-of-the-art shrapnel.

 

But in the realm of fiction

there is space for time, pain and

hardcore bullshit to coincide

like contentious Medieval factions

(the pope and the Medici for instance)

and discover what words cannot.

 

Ah, to buy the man’s tourist crap or not?

	- Barry Denny