Upon Rediscovering My Ancestors’ Home In An Ancient Italian Town*

The seated anziana, ninety-one, peers off
into nothing. Whitewashed stone
blinds her blue eyes as four walls

surround the town’s oldest, smallest
square. Rabbits, chickens, goats, she says,
two pigs and a cow. Families whose walls

made a rectangle. By night they tucked the animals
underground, closed the small arched doors
and waited for the roaming rooster’s crow.

Ask her, says the nurse, she remembers everything.
And my great-grandmother, Almerinda?
Rinda, we called her. Bella donna.

They lived there, down in front.
Another woman feeds cloistered chickens,
the only ones left. Tourists, still asleep,

make no noise in their rented rooms.
Now, she says, più stranieri che paisani.
More tourists than locals.

Her hand, still sure, swings a flowered shawl
upto her shoulder. Then the eyes return
to me — a ghost at dawn, straniero

who speaks the language
of three generations gone. I ask about
a strange little door I once drew

down at the gallery’s entrance.
Covered up. And the big stones surrounding?
Renovated, after the quake.

A smile lights, then disappears. The nurse
takes another puff of cigarette.
The chicken feeder is gone.

Eh, Tutto finisce, she declares.
Everything must come to an end.

*Castel di Sangro (Abruzzo)