Station begin to fire. Shells--red and black, white and
grey--bellow, snap, and crash into the blue-black sky. A whirr--the
Italian planes are rising. Their white centre lights throw a halo
about them, and, tip and tip, a red light and a green, spark out to a
great spread, closing together as the planes gain in altitude. Up
they go, the red, white, and green circles underneath their wings and
on either side of the fan-tails bright in the glow of the white
centre light. Up, up, slanting in mounting circles. "Holy Mother of
God! What is it?" Taubes over the city, flying at a great height,
flying in a wedge like a flight of wild geese. Boom! The
anti-aircraft guns are flinging up strings of luminous balls. Range
10,000 feet, try 10,500. Loud detonations, echoing far over the
Lagoon. The navigation lights of the Italian planes are a faint
triangle of bright dots. They climb in deliberate spirals, up and
up, up and up. They seem to hang. They hover without direction.
Ah, there are the Taubes, specks dotting the beam of a search-light.
One of them is banking. Two Italian machines dart up over him. He
spins, round--round--top-whirling, sleeping in speed, to us below he
seems stationary. Pup-pup-pup-pup-pup--machine-guns, clicking like
distant typewriters, firing with indescribable rapidity. The Italian
planes drop signal balloons, they hang in the air like suspended
sky-rockets, they float down, amber balls, steadily burning. The
ground guns answer, and white buds of smoke appear in the sky. They
seem to blossom out of darkness, silver roses beyond the silver shaft
of the search-light. The air is broken with noise: thunder-drumming
of cannon, sharp pocking of machine-guns, snap and crack of rifles.
Above, the specks loop, and glide, and zig-zag. The spinning Taube
nose-dives, recovers, and zums upward, topping its adversary.
Another Taube swoops in over a Nieuport and wags its tail, spraying
lead bullets into the Italian in a wide, wing-and-wing arc. The sky
is bitten red with stinging shrapnel. Two machines charge head on,
the Taube swerves and rams the right wing of the Nieuport. Flame!
Flame leaping and dropping. A smear from zenith to--following it,
the eye hits the shadow of a roof. Blackness. One poor devil gone,
and the attacking plane is still airworthy though damaged. It
wobbles out of the search-light and disappears, rocking. Two Taubes
shake themselves free of the tangle, they glide down--down--all round
them are ribbons of "flaming onions," they avoid them and pass on
down, close over the city, unscathed, so close you can see the black
crosses on their wings with a glass. Rifles crack at them from
roofs. Pooh! You might as well try to stop them with pea-shooters.
They curve, turn, and hang up-wind. Small shells beat about them
with a report like twanged harp-strings. "_Klar sum Werfen?_"
"_Jawohl._" "_Gut dock, werfen._" Words cannot carry down thousands
of feet, but the ominous hovering is a sort of speech. People wring
their hands and clutch their throats, some cover their ears.
Z-z-z-z-z! That whine would pierce any covering. The bomb has
passed below the roofs. Nothing. A pause. Then a report, breaking
the hearing, leaving only the apprehension of a great light and no
sound. They have hit us! _Misericordia_! They have hit Venice!
One--two--four--ten bombs. People sob and pray, the water lashes the
Rivas as though there were a storm. Another machine falls, shooting
down in silence. It is not on fire, it merely falls. Then slowly
the Taubes draw off. The search-light shifts, seeking them. The
gun-fire is spaced more widely. Field-glasses fail to show even a
speck. There is silence. The silence of a pulse which has stopped.
But the people walk in the brightness of fire. Fire from the Rio
della Tanna, from the Rio del Carmine, from the quarter of Santa
Lucia. Bells peal in a fury, fire-boats hurry with forced engines
along the canals. Water streams jet upon the fire; and, in the
golden light, the glittering horses of Saint Mark's pace forward,
silent, calm, determined in their advance, above the portal of the
untouched church.
The night turns grey, and silver, and opens into a blue morning.
Diamond roses sparkle on the Lagoon, but the people passing quickly
through the Piazza are grim, and workmen sniff the smoky air as they
fix ladders and arrange tools. Venice has tasted war. "_Evviva
Italia!_"
City of soft colours, of amber and violet, you are turning
grey-green, and grey-green are the uniforms of the troops who defend
you. The Bersaglieri still wear their cocks' feathers, but they are
green too, and black. Black as the guns mounted on pontoons among
the Lagoons before Venice, green as the bundles of reeds camouflaging
them from Austrian observation balloons. Drag up metre after metre
of grey-green cloth, stretch it over the five golden domes of Saint
Mark's Basilica. Hood their splendour in umbrella bags of cloth, so
that not one glint shall answer the mocking shimmer of the moon.
Barrows and barrows of nails for the wooden bastion of the Basilica,
hods and hods of mortar and narrow bricks to cover the old mosaics of
the lunettes. Cart-loads of tar and planking, and heaps, heaps,
hills and mountains of sand--the Lido protecting Venice, as it has
done for hundreds of years. They shovel sand, scoop sand, pour sand,
into bags and bags and bags. Thousands of bags piled against the
bases of columns, rising in front of carved corners, blotting out
altars, throttling the open points of arches. Porphyries,
malachites, and jades are squarely boarded, pulpits and fonts
disappear in swaddling bands. Why? The battle front is forty miles
away in Friuli, and Venice is not a fortified town. Why? Answer,
Reims! Bear witness, Ypres! Do they cover Venice without reason?
Nietzsche was a German, still I believe they read him in Vienna.
Blood and Iron! And is there not also Blood and Stone, Blood and
Bronze, Blood and Canvas? "Kultur," Venetians, in the Rio del
Carmine; there is no time to lose. Take down the great ceiling
pictures in the Ducal Palace and wrap them on cylinders. Build a
high trestle, and fashion little go-carts which draw with string.
Hush! They are coming--the four beautiful horses. They rise in a
whirl of disturbed pigeons. They float and descend. The people
watch in silence as, one after another, they reach the ground.
Across the tiles they step at last, each pulled in a go-cart;
merry-go-round horses, detached and solitary, one foot raised, tramp
over chequered stones, over chequered centuries. The merry-go-round
of years has brought them full circle, for are they not returning to
Rome?
For how long? Ask the guns embedded in the snow of glaciers; ask the
rivers pierced from their beds, overflowing marshes and meadows,
forming a new sea. Seek the answer in the faces of the Grenatieri
Brigade, dying to a man, but halting the invaders. Demand it of the
women and children fleeing the approach of a bitter army. Provoke
the reply in the dryness of those eyes which gaze upon the wreck of
Tiepolo's ceiling in the Church of the Scalzi. Yet not in Italy
alone shall you find it. The ring of searching must be widened, and
France, England, Japan, and America, caught within its edge. Moons
and moons, and seas seamed with vessels. Needles stitching the cloth
of peace to choke the cannon of war.
The boat draws away from the Riva. The great bronze horses mingle
their outlines with the distant mountains. Dim gold, subdued
green-gold, flashing faintly to the faint, bright peaks above them.
Granite and metal, earth over water. Down the canal, old, beautiful
horses, pride of Venice, of Constantinople, of Rome. Wars bite you
with their little flames and pass away, but roses and oleanders strew
their petals before your going, and you move like a constellation in
a space of crimson stars.
So the horses float along the canal, between barred and shuttered
palaces, splendid against marble walls in the fire of the sun.
Printed in the United States of America.
Books by AMY LOWELL
PUBLISHED BY
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_Poetry_
WHAT'S O'CLOCK
LEGENDS
PICTURES OF THE FLOATING WORLD
CAN GRANDE'S CASTLE
MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS
SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED
A DOME OF MANY-COLOURED GLASS
A CRITICAL FABLE
(IN COLLABORATION WITH FLORENCE ATSCOUGH)
FIR-FLOWER TABLETS: POEMS TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE
_Prose_
TENDENCIES IN MODERN AMERICAN POETRY
SIX FRENCH POETS: STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
JOHN KEATS