The Costa San Giorgio + 

We English make a tepid blot + 

On the messiness + 

Of the passionate Italian life-traffic + 

Throbbing the street + 

up + 

steep + 

Up + 

up + 

to the porta + 

Culminating + 

In the stained fresco of the dragon-slayer + 

The hips of women sway + 

Among the crawling children they produce + 

And the church hits the barracks + 

Where + 

The greyness of marching men + 

Falls through the greyness of stone + 

Oranges half-rotten are sold at a reduction + 

Hoarsely advertised as broken heads + 

Broken heads + 

and the barber + 

Has an imitation mirror + 

And Mary preserve our mistresses from seeing us as we see ourselves + 

Shaving + 

Ice cream + 

Licking is larger than mouths + 

Boots than feet + 

Slip + 

Slap + 

and the string dragging + 

And the angle of the sun + 

Cuts the whole lot in half + 

And warms the folded hands + 

Of a consumptive + 

Left outside + 

her chair is broken + 

And she wonders how we feel + 

For we walk very quickly + 

The noonday cannon + 

Having scattered the neighbourвАЩs pigeons + 

The smell of small cooking + 

From luckier houses + 

Is cruel to the maimed cat + 

Hiding + 

Among carpenterвАЩs shavings + 

From three boys + 

вАФOne holding a barвБ†вАФ + 

Who nevertheless + 

Born of human parents + 

Cry when locked in the dark + 

Fluidic blots of sky + 

Shift among roofs + 

Between bandy legs + 

Jerk patches of street + 

Interrupted by clacking + 

Of all the green shutters + 

From which + 

Bits of bodies + 

Variously leaning + 

Mingle eyes with the commotion + 

For there is little to do + 

The false pillow-spreads + 

Hugely initialed + 

Already adjusted + 

On matrimonial beds + 

And the glint on the china virgin + 

Consummately dusted + 

Having been thrown + 

Anything or something + 

That might have contaminated intimacy + 

Out + 

Onto the middle of the street + 