Poem from MAW - San Marco

Museo San Marco rain continuous rain the sky above the Duomo a leaded apron blocking light the Arno roiling pewter beneath the Ponte Vecchio unseasonable north winds prevailing across Appenine foothills, swirling the May day’s dun dress. Tourists duel with umbrellas in a narrow cloister walk, preoccupied with wet shoes absorbing cold from stone flags. Clusters of sight-seers move through common rooms: refectory, scriptorium, infirmary, chapter room, flow toward center-sloping stairs worn, as water wears a groove, by sandaled friars and sneakered seculars through five hundred years of comings and goings since Cosimo de Medici with a word ordered a restoration. Heads down concentrating on the slippery granite, reaching out to balance, hand against chilled wall, one by one they raise their eyes and freeze. Before them at the landing Giovanni du Fiesole has done to blue what only the maker of the sky had done, what only the crafter of the sea had done, has done to gold what bullion only hopes to be. Pigment married to wet plaster becomes the shape of pleated drape of wing just past flutter of the split second between Ave and Fiat forever fresh. No less than the maid tourists gasp. Eyes seared, breath-poor, they stagger on the steps, flee the too-dazzling light of Angelico’s Annunciation, seek respite in the gray and welcome Tuscan rain.