(A.D. 1847)

It was Pius IX who decided
         that the bark of a howitzer should
replace the exuberant riot
         of the city’s church bells, their uncoordinated

ringing, and therefore establish
         the hour of noon for the rabble.
The shakoed soldiers push
         the monster from its cave in the hill,

count backward in Italian,
         and the crowd flinches and recognizes
once again the voice of extinction
         by which it may tell the hours.

At the puppet theater nearby, Pulcinella
         is beaten around the head with a stick
by the Devil for the third time today.
         The children are silent and do not blink.

The cannon was elsewhere during
         the period of the Second World War,
the population finding
         other ways to fill its appetite for gunpowder;

nor again until 1959
         (lest the custom seem precocious,
or the dead too soon forgotten)
         did that stroke of outrageous noise

strip the tender green from each branch
         and announce its message to all
in accents of intolerant bronze.
         Through the smoke in its acrid blue coil.

we thank you, Pápa, we thank you,
         who taught us to make the sky
way over by the Pincio
         clap its hands in reply.