Ravenna, a poem by David Garyan
- David Garyan
- Nov 26, 2023
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 31
Ravenna I
In the beginning,
time destroys cities,
but death heals them again.
Like ruins of great empires,
only decay can give birth
to history—
only roots of ancient rocks
can speak the language
of once-living trees.
A novice sailor
describes the ocean
like a schoolboy in love.
Schoolboys in love
recount the waves
like sailors taking their
first voyage.
Your ship has aged
but the sails remain whiter
than ever.
Your compass has not only seen
lines change on a map—
geology itself matured
in front of your eyes.
Long ago you did
rest on the very precipice of the sea;
all of Rome was once at your feet,
but the ages have taken
all that away;
every sundial and clock,
every other human invention
of time has left you—
like fresh sailors
who’ve forgotten ports
that no longer bear riches.
You were thrown
into the arms of the past,
like a beautiful widow
who never remarried;
still, you never grieved for the future—
only the death of antiquity
made you grave.
Now the seekers of power
and wealth have let
their lust for you
die at last—
freedom, what freedom.
Looking at you,
only the best artists now
realize you were among
the most beautiful once.
Already, the silence is quiet
enough at midnight;
the chill of September air
is fertile enough for poets to grow.
You didn’t remarry
because you had no admirers—
every poet knows that’s a lie.
You could’ve borne
the fame of Venice;
you could’ve guarded
the wisdom of Rome;
you could’ve studied
in Bologna and been reborn
in Florence,
but you let no one
seduce you again,
except what passes us all.
You’re not the highest
mountain by any stretch—
simply the tallest
unclimbed peak,
until no such places exist.
Your streets are gardens
where only poets
can recognize
the plants.
Your alleys don’t follow
an architect’s precision—
the impressionist’s brushstrokes
lead them instead.
Your people don’t walk
with the honor of kings,
always raising their heads;
they glance slowly around
like philosophers,
yet still move with a purpose.
I want to fall
in love with you,
but I can’t—
you’re too old for me.
Maybe you don’t know,
but I’ve become a young monk
in an ancient monastery.
I feel the peace of dead forests,
of murdered trees cut down
at the height of youth—
only the knowledge
that I’ll become
a fleet of ships in the end
gives me some peace.
No, I won’t go to the fire.
I won’t become
the fuel of civilization.
My sins won’t keep me
from putting white sails
on my ships.
My virtue is a shipwreck
where everyone dies,
but the sunken treasure
is quickly recovered.
My vices are all things
which float on water,
so I curse the depth
and clarity of this world.
I still haven’t
entered Dante’s tomb—
certainly I'm worthy,
but I also fear my past.
My ego has burned
old books
just to collect the ashes
in bottles and throw them
into the ocean.
My foresighted vision
assured me I could throw
salt on the deep
wounds of the sea.
My pen is only the depth
in which squids are extinct.
Like vanity living
in a room full
of carnival mirrors,
I’ve written lines to call
myself a poet and I’ve
called myself a poet
just to impress people.
I’ve come here to cease
being a poet.
My heart is the English language
written from right to left.
My language is the last heartbeat
of a criminal on the run.
Ravenna, I wouldn’t want
to fall in love with you,
even if you were young enough.
I’ve become a hurricane
that only has barren fields
left to ravage.
I’ve become an ocean
that no longer thirsts
for young sailors’ lives.
I’m the sweetest forbidden fruit
trying to tempt the dead.
The grey face
of your history
has given me peace.
By looking at the wrinkles
around your eyes,
I’ve ceased searching
for the poet’s fountain
of old age and experience.
I finally understand what
it’s like to love something
without being in love with it.
Everything I write
has no meaning
and makes sense
at the same time—
it feels like life
has no purpose,
but you still choose
to rise in the morning
and watch yourself
go round the sun
once again.
Sometimes, past midnight,
I visit Piazza del Popolo
just to sit on a bench.
Like an adult who doesn’t
know what he wants,
I tell myself that I wish
to see no one,
to be alone,
to refuse the drunk
consolation of friends,
but that’s precisely when
I’m not telling the truth—
the urge to see someone
is strongest right then.
Time is also taking my youth,
but unlike you I remain a naïve sailor.
My eyes are tired feet
sick of new places.
My feet are vigilant eyes
trying to avoid familiar faces.
Still, I search for Dante on every
one of your streets.
My eyes are really two compasses
pointing in opposite directions.
I’ve forgotten the names
of every star and the shapes
of all constellations.
I know where the Supreme Poet is buried,
but I don’t know where he is.
Master, I’m afraid to ask
on what page of your book
I’ll end up in the end.
Hopefully I’ll end up in the end.
I don’t get why Plato
and Aristotle are in the beginning
and can’t go to heaven.
There’s no reason for nothing;
tell me this and I’ll be content.
No, again I’ve lied:
I don’t want understanding—
willpower, just willpower.
Give me the wisdom
to lose myself,
to destroy my maps,
to meet people without
wanting to know who they are,
or where they came from.
Don’t give me the silence
of the oldest libraries;
I just want their books.
Don’t give me the faith
of preachers and priests;
the silence of ancient
churches is holier.
I love the cobblestones
of Via Galla Placidia;
to me, they’re mosaics as well.
I never avoid this road
when walking to work—
the Basilica di San Vitale
appears from my favorite angle;
inside, under its mosaic sky,
lies the sarcophagus
of Isaac the Armenian.
I feel no peace
as I pass and witness
the antique exterior.
For a young man,
what’s there to behold,
except death and decay?
The naïve vision of youth
is perfect in its clarity;
the perfect vision of old age
is so rigid it can’t see
two steps ahead,
much less turn its head.
All I have left is my sight.
Why do I no longer feel
like an artist when I touch someone?
Why am I afraid to touch
everything I love?
Sight is the sugar
that makes jealousy sweet.
No longer do I want
to see like a poet;
take the words away
from my eyes
and put the world
in front of them again.
I didn’t arrive yesterday,
but your mosaics
are still strangers.
Is it because I have
nothing to covet here?
Does only greed
steal divine things
with its downcast glance?
No, I want to steal looking
straight at you, Ravenna—
I’m a thief who takes
without guilt,
but I’m also a thief who gives
without memory.
I want to see
neither prisons nor charities.
Show me helping hands
without fingerprints,
and take away
the faces of beggars.
No, the eyes of a poet
weren’t made for heaven;
they always find
good metaphors for theft,
and they see nothing wrong
with pride if it’s creative;
still, let my hands feel
only the purest of visions
and put them on paper.
I want to stop
looking at you like a poet,
to cease searching for Dante,
or Byron on every corner.
No longer do I want inspiration—
all I want is to be guided.
The world has become my hell.
Darkness and light is everywhere.
I’m a modern city
that will be forgotten by historians.
I’m an ancient empire
that no archaeologists can find.
The chains of freedom
have been placed on my ankles;
I must make decisions now
without guidance from Fate—
bear all debts and rewards
for each choice
that I’ve made;
yet, I’m not alone—
everyone’s world has become hell.
I’ve come to your streets
hoping to escape history
and forget the future.
Your wine is addictive
but gives me no sleep;
your church bells ring
like wine glasses at weddings—
where I’m in love with the brides.
I want neither sleep
when I’m alone,
nor love when I’m surrounded
by people.
I can’t bear the sight
of what I want,
but I want it all, especially
when there’s nothing to have.
Ravenna, I curse your empty streets
when I’m sober,
and I long to be alone
when your wine
has taken my hand.
Like an actor running
away from himself,
I don’t seek inspiration
walking your Street of Poets.
There’s too much life
in the verses of the dead,
too much patience
in the light of your mosaics.
To live, I must renounce
both death and tenacity.
Like mathematicians searching
for logic in love,
I’m just a fisherman approaching
the river of paradox with no bait.
I yearn to contradict myself
no more than three times.
1. I live to die.
2. If I don’t live then I die.
3. I must live by staring death in the face.
Every expression of yours
is the same and it’s different.
The way apples speak
equal tastes everywhere,
so your women and men
talk distinct languages,
but they all say the same thing.
Non voglio niente.
Non voglio niente.
Non voglio niente.
Dear English,
why don’t you understand
“I don’t want nothing?”
I want to live,
but I don’t want to live.
I want to leave,
but I don’t want to leave,
especially when it’s dark.
I walk next to your Candiano Canal,
smelling the piss and broken
beer bottles on warm winter nights;
these orange-cold visions
are the best sonnets
that don’t speak of love.
I’m so relieved
that I don’t have to love you;
I feel like an explorer
who’s tired of traveling
but also doesn’t miss home.
I’m a man who can’t
know what she wants.
I’m a woman who can’t
know what he wants.
My grammar is all too fucked up.
I’ve learned everything properly,
but without learning the rules.
I always make love
the subject of the sentence,
but I don’t know what love is.
I always make love
the subject of the sentence,
but I don’t know why that’s right.
I came here
to forget how English is thought
and to find your sentences
that don’t need a subject.
I’m tired of people,
of thinking and subjects.
I want to live in a language
where only verbs exist—
a world of pure action and motion.
I want to kill all
my philosophies and beliefs.
No! Kill all
my philosophies and beliefs.
Let me climb Mount Purgatory—
dissolve all my thoughts good and bad
with sweat and exhaustion.
Ravenna, you have many mountains,
even though you have none at all.
Like fortune tellers walking
counterclockwise when
predicting the past,
you contradict yourself
and you don’t.
I love your Torre Civica;
it can never compare
to the leaning tower in Pisa,
but it bows like an obscure actor
aware of his old age—
proud of himself
and his long years of privacy.
I’ve come
to your enotecas and trattorias
in search of obscurity and fame.
I’ve come searching for wine
that won’t get me drunk—
no matter how much I drink.
I’ve come to escape escape—
to be moral without conscience,
and embarrassed without shame,
to escape a world of revolution
where things never change.
Who will make the first
revolution against revolution?
Who will walk into the world
that’s become dialectic hell?
Who will talk to the devil himself?
Who? Who? Who?
Alas, there’s no center in hell anymore.
The only exception lies
in the purgatory of language.
Grieve or don’t grieve
for the post-modern mortal,
but something has swallowed
the center.
The center is no longer the center.
My hell is now collapsing
from all sides.
No lever is long enough
nor fulcrum right enough
to move hell away.
I fear there isn’t enough
silence in your basilicas
nor in Dante’s tomb
to guide me—
the real reason
I’ve been afraid to go in.
You’re quieter than most
of the world’s cities,
but maybe not quiet enough.
What will you do in 2021,
when the Supreme Poet
will have died for 700 years?
How many others
have left this world
255500 days ago?
I walk near the Basilica di San Francesco,
and wonder if I’m related
to humanity or time?
Time is the tormenter;
it’s an ocean tempting
only those who can’t swim;
it’s a night that stays silent
only for those who can’t sleep;
it measures but doesn’t feel;
it calculates but doesn’t reason;
it remembers but doesn’t love;
it speaks but doesn’t teach;
it has drowned many
philosophers who
could do nothing but think.
Paradise can never have time,
yet hell still invented
the instruments to measure it.
Why do we long
for 700 years of death?
I can’t wait for history
to happen anymore.
Show me your living
Dantes, Byrons, and Wildes.
No, Ravenna, I’m not related
to Chronos and neither are your people.
We’re born from humanity.
We want to live as we die—forever.
We want to feel reason and love.
We want to feel, reason, and love.
We want the freedom
to be musicians and artists
without needing to have
more talent than anyone.
We want the freedom of wrong
notes and strange proportions.
We want art without art.
We want to be our own generation—
to eat and sleep like no one else,
to argue in churches
and pray in our homes
for some peace in the world.
We want our own chaos and insanity.
We can never be Dantes,
but we’re here and we must stay.
Only two freedoms exist—
to exist or to die
and only one choice is freedom.
Why must we be born
against our will?
Why must death take life
for it to be free?
Death is not death anymore.
The contradictions of history are history.
We want to follow our own
path with a guide.
We want our own hell
and to make sense of it.
Master, how long must
I wait by the Porta Serrata,
wondering if I should go north or south?
Why are the flames of freedom
so unmoved by my cold hands?
Why don’t you come and lead me?
Surely I’m not worthy of poetry,
but is a little salvation so trying?
I’m just a beggar
who can pay for his comfort.
All I am is a lion
who has afforded his cage.
The strength
of your history can make
the years pass sooner.
Let’s celebrate 2021 now
and may early demise save us.
I don’t believe anyone
who says otherwise;
death is the life of the poet—
like snow, artists
bloom only in winter,
or they climb mountains
searching for January.
Their words are ice sculptures in hell.
Like an unwanted child,
the poet’s birth
is never unplanned—
we’re merely the smoke
from the arsonist’s fire;
we don’t claim the innocence
of unforeseen flames.
Our lives are the accidents
committed by Fate.
Why must the colors
of not only your poets,
but also those from beyond
die in order to live?
Why does poetry flourish
in forgotten cemeteries,
but not in the liveliest piazzas
and boulevards?
Under footsteps of life,
everything can grow
in the spring,
except words.
Words are a thousand beautiful women
trying to seduce an old monk;
they’re the weeds
in the garden of sight.
No one needs words
to witness the beauty of Liguria—
let alone verse that’s beautiful.
Poetry needs the hell of winter,
where only poems can spring
from the fertile snow.
I love you because
you live in perpetual December,
and it rarely snows here.
Your streets don’t have
the voice to seduce
many July travelers,
but your trees in October
have the colors to cure loneliness.
The poets of Rome and Paris
are poets looking for attention;
the poets of Ravenna and Trento
are poets looking for poetry.
How many old scribes do you have?
Don’t give me your twenty year old scribblers—
the ones who drink at MacGowan
and write because they have
to express themselves.
Where are your bards
who don’t shoot ink
into their veins?
Where are your eulogists
who can write
in the absence of death?
Where are your poets
who don’t call themselves poets?
Dante, I place poetry
in the lowest circle of hell—
still, my life will be
twice removed from reality.
I’ve traveled endlessly
to reach the doors
of the most literate cities,
but even the sweat
of crossing great distances
couldn’t kill my anxiety
to knock and announce myself.
Ravenna, I negotiated an ocean
not knowing your language,
and I came here alone.
You put no door in front of me,
so I walked in without being invited.
Hopefully I’m now out of hell.
November 2019
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