Posto Santo
Emilio N. Bankier
Beyond the white caps of the northern mountains
near the foothills where the cows and the brooks
gargle and run down into the ricefields,
the heat will hit you like a bull, trample over you and drag you
to a place long forgotten and long rotten
like the wrinkled, molding fruit in the tabletop bowl.
This place, a village they claim,
a sanctuary to all which is crushing,
place of deep and inevitable anguish
which drives to exhaustion beyond the depths,
beyond the depths.
Every house is an artifact unworthy of study,
an old skull so dusty and cracked and chipped,
untouched even by the wind which does not blow here
for it was defeated by sickness and its weight.
And the heat which makes sweat and stick and itch and scratch
and drowns the flies and kills the dogs
with the bodies to be washed away
by the rain that follows or crushed by the hail
come thundering down from above
onto carcass of body and carcass of houses
with brittle shingles like stacked eggshells,
with a died out color and long without a mother.
Is this the dream of Remus, and Abel, his brother?
Tell Cain that I’ve found his stick
among the bones here of the Caesars and Alexander
and mine and yours but not the bones of the dead
for they are worthless, they do not put them here.
And a pale yellow flower whose name I do not know
hangs from the the fingertips
of a dried out woman, a mother, a grandmother maybe,
but it doesn’t matter; she’s dead, she’s forgotten
and her skinny body weighs like a rock
at the bottom of our guts and the pale yellow flower
eats at our skin like the heat, like the bugs, like death
and mourning that dwells here, that swells here.
What love is there here in the burning and the road
carving a path through the graveyard,
where it’s not a place of touching;
all that touches is the sickle and the skin
and the needle of the mosquito
piercing skin and racing death.
And there is no escape for there is no movement,
you cannot move a muscle for the heat weighs on you,
an anchor welded to every piece of skin,
a cancer on each cell of the body.
Only the cats move, but I don’t think they’re real,
they must be death for they ignore the heat,
it’s like they don’t feel it;
they glide through the streets and lay quietly
with a well placed purr on the railings
of teetering, cracked balconies, like overseers.
Like the demons of hell which this must be
because hell cannot be any hotter
but hell in hell there is howling,
and all the cries of the murderers
and the hypocrites fill in the space
left empty by the flames.
Where the ghost of Dante, searching for his crown,
crushes beneath his red soles the white eyes of Homer;
crying out again and hearing nothing in response,
he ventures out up the dusty road
where the air is stale and hot
and he is choked by his own sweat
which runs instead of tears.
And heaven is nowhere to be seen
except from the top of the villa of my ancestors
where if you peek your head out the window,
you can sometimes see heaven or Olympus,
only you will also see the ground three stories beneath you,
and you will wonder what it feels like
for your skull to hit the pavement.
But church bells will call you away
and you will gather with the other souls
coming out from their shells to gather in this church
of marble lies where in the center a cross glows,
not because it is holy but because it is gold.
And outside again in the heat when all prayers have been said
and songs badly sung, those beings
with their skin hanging from their bones,
like the weeds hang from the cracks
between the red bricks of the church,
murmur in an unknown tongue that only they understand
and only they may speak.
This is their reward and it will die out too,
and wander out into the ricefields,
the only place that is sacred, and it is vast
and swarming with mosquitoes and forgotten to all
except God and me and you and the empty nights.
near the foothills where the cows and the brooks
gargle and run down into the ricefields,
the heat will hit you like a bull, trample over you and drag you
to a place long forgotten and long rotten
like the wrinkled, molding fruit in the tabletop bowl.
This place, a village they claim,
a sanctuary to all which is crushing,
place of deep and inevitable anguish
which drives to exhaustion beyond the depths,
beyond the depths.
Every house is an artifact unworthy of study,
an old skull so dusty and cracked and chipped,
untouched even by the wind which does not blow here
for it was defeated by sickness and its weight.
And the heat which makes sweat and stick and itch and scratch
and drowns the flies and kills the dogs
with the bodies to be washed away
by the rain that follows or crushed by the hail
come thundering down from above
onto carcass of body and carcass of houses
with brittle shingles like stacked eggshells,
with a died out color and long without a mother.
Is this the dream of Remus, and Abel, his brother?
Tell Cain that I’ve found his stick
among the bones here of the Caesars and Alexander
and mine and yours but not the bones of the dead
for they are worthless, they do not put them here.
And a pale yellow flower whose name I do not know
hangs from the the fingertips
of a dried out woman, a mother, a grandmother maybe,
but it doesn’t matter; she’s dead, she’s forgotten
and her skinny body weighs like a rock
at the bottom of our guts and the pale yellow flower
eats at our skin like the heat, like the bugs, like death
and mourning that dwells here, that swells here.
What love is there here in the burning and the road
carving a path through the graveyard,
where it’s not a place of touching;
all that touches is the sickle and the skin
and the needle of the mosquito
piercing skin and racing death.
And there is no escape for there is no movement,
you cannot move a muscle for the heat weighs on you,
an anchor welded to every piece of skin,
a cancer on each cell of the body.
Only the cats move, but I don’t think they’re real,
they must be death for they ignore the heat,
it’s like they don’t feel it;
they glide through the streets and lay quietly
with a well placed purr on the railings
of teetering, cracked balconies, like overseers.
Like the demons of hell which this must be
because hell cannot be any hotter
but hell in hell there is howling,
and all the cries of the murderers
and the hypocrites fill in the space
left empty by the flames.
Where the ghost of Dante, searching for his crown,
crushes beneath his red soles the white eyes of Homer;
crying out again and hearing nothing in response,
he ventures out up the dusty road
where the air is stale and hot
and he is choked by his own sweat
which runs instead of tears.
And heaven is nowhere to be seen
except from the top of the villa of my ancestors
where if you peek your head out the window,
you can sometimes see heaven or Olympus,
only you will also see the ground three stories beneath you,
and you will wonder what it feels like
for your skull to hit the pavement.
But church bells will call you away
and you will gather with the other souls
coming out from their shells to gather in this church
of marble lies where in the center a cross glows,
not because it is holy but because it is gold.
And outside again in the heat when all prayers have been said
and songs badly sung, those beings
with their skin hanging from their bones,
like the weeds hang from the cracks
between the red bricks of the church,
murmur in an unknown tongue that only they understand
and only they may speak.
This is their reward and it will die out too,
and wander out into the ricefields,
the only place that is sacred, and it is vast
and swarming with mosquitoes and forgotten to all
except God and me and you and the empty nights.
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Emilio N. Bankier (PO '27) was born in Vienna, to Austrian and Italian parents. Immigrating to and living most of his life in Boston, Massachusetts, much his writing is rooted in his attachment to his native countries and the memories thereof.
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