In Ravenna

Chad Davidson

Three boys, old enough to hurt someone, 

 young enough to think it doesn't matter, 

 sat outside the small green plot I came to. 

 Dante's grave. All of us pulled there, 

 experiencing gravity, out of control 

 for different reasons. I could not prepare, 

 really, for facing this, just as these boys --

 smoking too deliberately, collars relieved 

 like rose petals from the extravagant 

 ceilings of basilicas（长方形会堂） -- could not understand 

 their own indifference, or why they huddled, 

 stared when I walked by. They were a type 

 of beauty, as far as beauty is ignorant of itself, 

 disdainful of place: that casual square, 

 Franciscan façade, that entire city turning

 under the swelter of an afternoon, June 

 in the marshlands（沼泽地） to the east. Sometimes, 

 I stand in front of history and feel nothing. 

 Then, some wrecked mosaic, awkward 

 in the transom（横梁） of a secondary church, behaves 

 just so, as if the artists thought of me and all 

 my imperfections. Sometimes, people gather 

 in the hearts of forgotten cities, and I hate them 

 for their nonchalance（冷漠）, the terror in their boredom. 

 They have been dying here for millennia, these boys, 

 and there is little I can do, on this casual trip 

 in the heat, map in hand, to guide them out.