Catalog of Dreams...14

XI

Her 'bus went at noon, but she wanted that view again.
From the ancient stone barn she saw Gimignano's towered crown.
Blue hills and gray olives, the misty gray-blue of the plain,
All Guido's inherited memory had lovingly known.

She looked at the barn, and she startled in joyful dismay.
One door had a worn Gothic arch that old splendors revealed,
And over it, caked now with dried mold and hayseed and clay,
Was a lump roughly hinting an ancient armorial shield.

The long narrow duckpond, walled in with cut boulders immense,
Where protestant geese and fat motherly ducks were afloat,
Could have been - *must* have been - part of an armored defense.
She cried out. She'd found the D'Argenti castello's old moat.

Panting, victorious, calling on Guido to follow,
She hastened inside. There, an old olive press and a cart
Half hid a wide chimney, now blackened and scarred, and the hollow
Of what had been a fireplace of marble in old Tuscan art.

The room had been longer, a noble and Florentine hall,
Cut short now by boarding; The flimsy rough pine-treaded stair
Had been a marble, as chunks of the old shining rail would recall,
And a delicate oriel window above was still there,
With a fragment of rat-eaten tapestry high on the wall.
This barn had been heart of a D'Argenti keep that had been
No fortress, but fine enough once for a Regency queen!

She found a hid passage that led to the low broken tower.
She stood on its breezy top, there where one morning had stood
The rebel and baron, betrayed in his desolate hour,
Watching the Austrians creep through the innocent wood.
Erect, with her wind-blowing hair for a banner she stands,
The first of D'Argenti returned from the cold alien lands.

Catalog of Dreams....15

XII

She was taking no 'busses! She sought for some sage who could say
Whether or not she had truly discovered the hall.
She talked to her escort of boys of the sad yesterday,
To old women washing their clothes by the brown village wall,
And the ardent young priest at the church of St.Vincent and Paul.

They began now to greet her, to answer her smile with a glow.
Rina and Nina had told of her fictional lore.
Day after day she stayed on here, unwilling to go.
Day after day they reluctantly liked her the more.

She found her authority, blind-deaf but positive still:
Signora Grazetto, and ninety and seven tomorrow.
Lucy was right: the old barn and the tower on the hill
Had been the D'Argenti domain, and its loss was her sorrow.

She climbed to the castle in twilight of silver and gray.
She was mad and she knew it, rejoiced in it, all unresisting.
It was hers! She must own it, some crazy impossible way,
For the spirit of Guido was hovering by her, insisting.

She would sell her own house; she would plead, she would argue and fight
She was out and out stubborn and briskly and recklessly gay.
She would have what belonged to her; no one should question her right
to barter her life for her longing -- the D'Argenti way.

But she was no heiress, no seeker for thrills, to support
A great open house with an insolent counterfeit court.
At home, she had only a lodging-house. Ah, that was well!
She could keep up her castle by turning it to a hotel,
And maybe the timorous, maybe the poor paying guest
Would honor its shield just as much as the mink-coated best.

She saw the sad farmer who owned the baronial splendor.
Would he sell her the place, which she liked -- in a moderate way.
Of course he would! Bacco! And what would the signora tender?
He'd be off to Arezzo tomorrow, and Moko's cafe!
Well, six million lire in cash? A most generous price!
He hemmed, but he took it before she could offer it twice.

She cabled her lawyer to sell her house -- quick, if he could.
(It was sold in a week; an apartment house stands where it stood.)
She talked to a bank in Siena regarding a loan.
She talked to the dealers in brick and cement and in wood.
She talked to the workers in wood and in brick and in stone.

Catalog of Dreams...16

#

A Happy Romanticist, out on a spree all alone,
She fell into panic at all she was planning to spend.
She asked the Puttinis for counsel. Yes! Bone of her bone,
They would toil, they would risk, for their townswoman -- cousin and friend.

They called Dame Grazetto, the ancient, to speak for the land,
To welcome her coming, to comfort, confirm her and bless.
The old one stooped over and humbly she kissed Lucy's hand,
With "We honor you, love you and pray for you. Our Baroness!"

Love or dislike it, that now was her much-honored name.
The Communist mayor called her "Comrade the Baroness - Dame."
Baronessa D'Argenti, aristocrat, as it would seem -
She belonged in her catalog, as an improbable dream!

XII

XIII

Scraping a grained inch of dirt from the floor of the hall,
Sweeping the stone with their besoms of red alder twigs,
Scrubbing it, scouring it, cramp-kneed but gay through it all,
They rescue the castle from decades of chickens and pigs;
With towels round their heads and their generous blouses undone,
Singing and splashing the suds in the Tuscany sun.

The Baroness Lucy, Signora Puttini, the twins,
A chattering troup of young girls and old women and men,
Noisy with brooms as their hot, hustling labor begins,
They wake the drowsed castle to life loud and cheerful again.
And the upper rooms, dusty-aired, filled with old hay trampled deep,
Become again cells where a wandering <u>poet</u>, might sleep.

A mason from Lucca brings all the great fireplace to sight,
Its glory of marble, its thick hood of garlanded lead.
A carpenter builds an oak stair to replace the pine flight
Put in by the owner who'd sold off the suave marble tread.

They tear down the army hut, slaughter the jungle of weeds,
And clear out the old marble pool, choked with green ooze and reeds.
And the clay-daubed escutcheon outside, when it's polished, displays
The arms of D'Argenti - a moon with diagonal rays.

She's off to Siena, to furnish her crazy hotel:
The rugs and the lamps, and an office with business-like files,
And rose-painted beds, though each room will be plain as a cell.
And fine copper pots for a kitchen of plaster and tiles.

Catalog of Dreams....17

#

Locanda del Tempo Passato hangs high as her sign --
The Inn of the Olden Days; painted in silver and blue;
Rina and Nina have christened it well with new wine.
And this August her castle, her heart, begin living anew.

XIV

She might have a few guests in this autumn; oh, surely a few.
She'd put in her time until spring in completing the inn --
In buying the candles, the spices, and cards with the View.
She laid down a barrel of good local wine to begin.

She'd train village girls as her helpers, in neat white and black,
And Mrs. Puttini as chef, and she'd most of all train
Herself in what subtle hotelier arts she might lack;
As stewart, accountant, detective and kind chatelaine.

It came so surprisingly. Doubtful and tired and oppressed,
The emptiness jeering and calling her venture a fad,
She saw, open-mouthed, that she seemed to be having a guest,
That her castle of nonsense was not irretrievably mad.

Up the path from the village a student, with knapsack and cane,
Was climbing, as low at an inn to his poet's desire.
She met him with gravity; nervously tried to refrain
From hysterical joy that her hospice had drawn in one friar.

He bowed to her, awkwardly asked her the rate for a night.
Now finance to her was an evil and difficult craft.
The rate that she gave was so low, so indecently light,
That he stared in bewilderment, gaped, and then suddenly laughed.

"Dear lady, forgive the inquisitive interest I take,
But has your experience here been enormously large?
Aren't you, like your castle, more eager to give than to take?
You haven't yet learned how to bully a guest, and to charge!
I'll pay what you ask, if you'll also permit me to pay
By washing the dishes and lugging the ashes away!"

guest-

So he was the first to be guest in the pine-scented hall.
She cooked scaloppine; he helped her by setting the table;
And then by the fireplace she told him of Guido and all,
And the young scholar-gipsy was stirred by her hopes and her fable.

Catalog of Dreams....18

"Some day," he cried, "Pico, reborn from his incorrupt ghost,
And latter-day Giottos, and honest young students and gay,
Shall fill this whole castle again; a D'Argenti be host,
And a marvelling world see again a new Renaissance day!"

No clock, tick-tock,
So slow to go.

The canary was trilling; the fire on the wide hearth was bright,
But brighter her hope now. She glanced at the Umbrian chair.
A presence had come to it out of the mystical night.
And it was her husband, her Guido, who smiled at her there!

Ended is your long endeavour,
Lucy of the candlelight.
Stay you now in peace forever
Voyager by the fire, good-night!

Chenonceaux --Versailles-- Neuchatel--
Parkhotel-Schoenegg at Grindelwald --
Zutich. June - July 1950.