By Cyrus Cassells
after Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
I stepped into the leafy stronghold
of the prosperous Finzi-Contini’s grounds—
a phalanx of magnificent oaks and elms
rumored to be planted by the crafty Borgias—
I fell in love with an emerald-eyed girl
in an elite, high-walled garden,
Eden of her “scarcely Jewish seeming” family’s
redoubtable parkland and estate.
Who was this luminous being?
Goddess-struck, tossing and turning,
suddenly my nighttime body became
an unhampered theater
of upending stirrings, longings,
“heavens to Betsy!” gasping dreams:
“Micòl is everything!”
became my whispered-to-myself,
head-over-heels mantra.
Micòl, honey-skinned paragon
in her Polaris-bright tennis clothes—
my Black Shirt-resistant athlete
whose parents never assented to the Fascists,
a dizzy, plebeian boy’s
feminine heroine and dazzling lighthouse
in the chilling days when precious,
once accessible libraries,
mainstay municipal tennis courts
were strictly forbidden to us
destined-to-be-ousted Ferrara Jews.
The genteel world Micòl and I inhabited,
in my countdown to manhood.,
shaken and shaken
like an heirloom snow globe,
and in the white hurlyburly
of what happened, the knife-keen
“anti-miracle” of carnage
and abysmal expulsion,
the keepsake memory of Micòl,
war-swept Ferrara goddess
who invested her active faith
only in the unstoppable thrust
of nowadays,
the impetus of the elucidating present
(tell me, God of Abraham,
did I really have a heart before Micol?),
her lissome, aristocratic fist
forever raised—
Lord, its delicate, all-too-human beauty
grips me all at once,
like an ineluctable bell-toll
or a resplendent cantor’s note—
against the fury of the pendant future.
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
I go to poetry and the other arts for spiritual and emotional access, to help make sense of an often baffling and sometimes dispiriting world.
What was the inspiration for your creative work?
Giorgio Bassani's classic Italian Jewish novel, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which was also made into an Oscar-winning film by VIttorio de Sica.
Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation?
As someone who grew up in the Mojave Desert, I find I have a great sensitivity to water and foliage, and cherish planetary blues and greens as much as I can. As someone who has twice been a climate refugee, due to out-of-control wildfires, I remain deeply concerned about our current legacy of disregard and displacement.
