Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down <br />A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out <br />To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling. <br />But far up the mountain, behind the town, <br />We too were swept out, out by the wind, <br />Alone with the Tuscan grass. <br /> <br />Wind had been blowing across the hills <br />For days, and everything now was graying gold <br />With dust, everything we saw, even <br />Some small children scampering along a road, <br />Twittering Italian to a small caged bird. <br /> <br />We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood, <br />And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face. <br /> <br />I found the spider web there, whose hinges <br />Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust, <br />Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging <br />And scattering shadows among shells and wings. <br />And then she stepped into the center of air <br />Slender and fastidious, the golden hair <br />Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there, <br />While ruins crumbled on every side of her. <br />Free of the dust, as though a moment before <br />She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself. <br /> <br />I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped <br />Away in her own good time. <br /> <br />Many men <br />Have searched all over Tuscany and never found <br />What I found there, the heart of the light <br />Itself shelled and leaved, balancing <br />On filaments themselves falling. The secret <br />Of this journey is to let the wind <br />Blow its dust all over your body, <br />To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly <br />All the way through your ruins, and not to lose <br />Any sleep over the dead, who surely <br />Will bury their own, don't worry.<br /><br />James Arlington Wright<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-journey-2/
