_                                                       _I.

Into the low scrub of winter I came like the snow
and followed the deathcart.
Of justice and mercy
there was none upon this earth.

As if the Lombard dusk had raised aloft
one last sign,
there, overhead, in the coarse tangle of boughs,
against the whiteness of the sky,
pinned to that barrenness,
the cold,
the empty bird’s nest,
had come to roost.

_                                                       _II.

And beyond the flat-bottomed boats in the canal,
the city of robe and horoscope
with its adepts at alchemy,
its damp dungeons
and torture chambers.

O, malevolent dream,
where the blood, ill-used,
dripped from beams,
the people cringing
in the abbey’s entryway
beneath the wind gusts from the catapult.
Through the reddish haze of Padua’s churches and towers
an angel plummeted,
fell headlong through the stanchions
and came to rest, shoulder crushed,
before a horizon of halberds,
his look extinct.

_                                                       _III.

City of Marsilius,
smoke-blackened parchment
of the prophet
in the white fire of the snows—
three men rode past the cart in silence,
the Cardinal’s envoys; no hoofprint there,
that would ever lead to peace.

Lord, thy secret is great,
captive to the stillness of the rocks;
I am but dust,
a loose brick in the wall.

_                                                       _IV.

Darkness lopped off treetops,
the gabion sank.
The dead still lay in the open field.
The infantry cut wood,
lime ovens billowed smoke.

I walked through tangled undergrowth, I pushed the cart,
condemned to watch,
past what the senses could endure,
the misery of the ages.