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Bob Vance

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There is a child crying

in a house between the hill
where Katherine stood before her vision
and the terracotta church of San Domenico.

There is a child crying not far
from the house of St Katherine where the black and white
                                                                                      nuns
dust the gold and marble,
where the statue of St Katherine stands
always raising her white arms in the cool courtyard.

Everything, all the noise in Siena on May Day
rises from between these housed ridges: the goose bark
of a moped, the dogs the dogs the dogs the sound
of one child crying.

A woman opens green shutters to check her laundry.
A truck roars up another hill.
It rains for a while and then it stops.
Swallows race and squeal in circles and eights
between these hills of stacked houses.

Everyone is talking
from everywhere in the city, leaning out
windows and doors. from between columns
of St Katherine’s shrine, in a crowd walking slowly
up steep hills to II Campo, and then
someone in a house somewhere shouts fiercely at a child.

St Katherine,
healer, peacemaker, good talker,
St Katherine,
woman in a church of men,

St Katherine,
deliverer of peace from plague

St Katherine,
will you raise your arms toward me?
St Katherine,
in your city one child cries,
St Katherine,
here, if one house moved
everything would fall.



Marsha Levin - Untitled illustration


Page(s) 64-65

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