Robert Penn Warren
TO A LITTLE GIRL, ONE YEAR OLD,
IN RUINED FORTRESS
To a place of ruined stone we brought you, and sea-reaches.
Rocca:
fortress, hawk-heel, lion-paw, set on a hill.
A
hill,
no. Sea-cliff, and crag-cocked, the embrasures commanding
the beaches,
Range easy, with most fastidious mathematic and skill.
Philipus me fecit:
he of Spain, the black-browed, the anguished,
For whom nothing prospered, though he loved
God.
His arms, great scutcheon of stone, once at drawbridge, have now
languished
Long in the moat, under garbage; at moat-brink, rosemary with blue,
thistle with gold bloom, nod.
Sun-blaze and cloud tatter, it is the sirocco, the dust swirl
is
swirled
Over the bay-face, mounts air like gold gauze whirled; it traverses the
blaze-blue of water.
We have brought you where the geometry of a military rigor survives
its own ruined world,
And sun regilds your gilt hair, in the midst of your laughter.
Rosemary, thistle, clutch stone. Far hangs Giannutri in blue air. Far
to that blueness the heartaches,
And on the exposed approaches the last gold of gorse-bloom, in the
sirocco, shakes.
