L’Ora D’Oro (The Golden Hour)

by Robert Hahn

The crepusculari poets rejected lofty tones for plain language. They were the avant guard of their time, though the next generation called for a radically new poetry, which they proposed would be irrational and fragmentary. This became the agenda of the Futurists. Subsequently, the Hermeticists sought to make poetry new yet again through their use of symbols and linguistic density.

- History of Italian Poetry

Racing past a highway blur of malls and multi-plex and

Signor Mufflers and Pizza Huts with roofs of Minoan-red under

Clouds of billowing smoke from Burger Kings with rich

Aromas of grilling flesh, I saw a sign flash by which seemed to say

Mr. Blue’s House of Worship. Funky. I could relate to Mr. Blue’s

New-age congregation, but when I looked again, it said Mt. Blue

House of Worship. Mount Blue, Maine. Near Camden.

*

In Rome whatever I heard was blurred, the runners going by at the Villa Pamphili as sun slanted under the umbrella pines, as they chattered back and forth, their senseless words in sparkling slivers, in diminishing amber fragments, glassy tesserae, dust-glitter, haze.

*

Camden is a “a poor man’s yacht haven,” my guidebook says.

Surely this is nonsense. At sunset it looks rich as Sybaris.

An opulent gold-leaf sheen laid flat on the water.

A crowd of costly yachts at anchor. Elgant sloops,

Period-pieces from another age, refitted for scenic cruises,

Competing for our attention in a clutter of hand-lettered signs

Whose claims are hard to make out, against the sun-dazzle.

Each word here is sharp. At the next table a guy is saying

I tried the Triumph, no power, the Kawasaki had spunk

But seemed jumpy, the Honda was stable, reporting

In broadcaster tones. His friends look bored.

*

Lowell is more out of favor now than he could have dreamed, when he lived in Maine and his wit was still the terror of his friends, when he was feared and his change of fashion was the last word, when he wrote that someone seemed to step from an L.L. Bean catalogue, dismantling in a stroke his great baroque orchestration, for a hip new style.

*

We are the future! the Futurists cry. Out with the ornate! Pitch the shelves

Full of vases and crystal -- pieni di vasi e di cristalli -- into the street!

*

Tourists in Lands End casual drifting from the harbor.

White tents on the village green, dyed gold.

Glow of subdued glazes. Breathless wicker. Potpourri.

*

She lights a cigarette and orders chardonnay, she knows chardonnays, a husky voice droning about her latest thing, the volunteer rescue squad, which has made her feel

engaged again, the Golden Hour, she explains, is 60 minutes from arrival at the scene to when they wheel you into emergency, if they make it, the time to pull you out and get you there, a precious hour, a thin, airy measure, within whose limits you could still live.

Italian Lesson: Lui vivera’! He will live! Non viveva. He did not.

In Rossolini’s Open City, the torturer’s boast is parlera’! He will talk!

The priest’s weary answer, so much later, is non parleva. No. He didn’t.

*

How terrible their sacrifice was,

The brave partigiani, for a future less than they dreamed.

How naïve the futurists seem, their wheeling

Search-light rays, the rickety antic arcs of vorticism,

Easy prey, for bull-horned thugs in a rush to make it new.

*

Someone is always ready to tear it down

And start over with blunt clean lines.

The end came for the Myceneans

When the Dorians, whoever they were, burned down the walls

And rushed in with axes held high, incomprehensibly screaming.

*

Mycenean death-masks. Thin gold shine. Blank expression.

Hammered gold leaf of gowns, draping the women in Klimt.

Beneath the ornament, what turbulence, what

Loathing and fear. Do we want to know?

*

On the bright brass bed she had coiled like Cleopatra and bounced

Like Josephine Baker in Paris between the wars and sprung

Her shimmying rhythm and vocative wail above his head.

The next day, she wanted plain talk. He longed

For her dazzling glossolalia, for the glitter

Of her midnight babble.

Outside the town, the Camden Hills rise, pushed up quickly by hot ore,

Worn down patiently by mile-high glaciers grinding back and forth.

In the last of the light this evening, their thickly wooded slopes blur

And look voluptuous, a body turning toward sleep, fuzzily receding.

*

My friend bends to a rock in the Andes, to study

The patch of color he has seen. To my eye, it is moss,

A plush stone-cover, greenish-orange and flecked with yellow.

To him, a rare sphagnum, observed for the first time,

Which he records in his field-book, in fine calligraphy.

Out of its surface a dust-born spore floats to his lungs,

A carcinoma, unfolding slowly over the years.

*

We are a landslide, an earthquake, the Futurist Manifesto shouts.

We race through the streets, smashing pensive and musing windows!

*

An ambulance racing through the dusk: a whirling amber radiance.