Once again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog. It’s also been a while since I’ve taken good pictures (...sorry, Mom). But, since I’m taking a poetry class this month, I have a few of my poems to explain these past few weeks here in Orvieto.
Easter is a much more extensive celebration in Italy than in American. They refer to the whole week as the ‘Settimana Sancta’ or Holy Week, and this reality permeates much of their lives. We attended SO MANY church services last week. On Saturday night, many of the other students and I went to a midnight Mass in the Duomo in Orvieto. The service began at 11:15 and didn’t end until 1:45 in the morning! I may have (very briefly) nodded off a few times because the mass was in a mix of Italian and Latin. During the service, though, they turned out all of the lights in the cathedral and then lit a bonfire in the back. We were all holding candles, so then the bishop led a procession to the altar, lighting each row of candles on the way. It was a little bit like a Christmas Eve candlelight service, but much more dramatic and beautiful inside an old, gothic Cathedral!
On Friday night, we also attended the town’s Via Crucis service. Several hundred people met in the piazza in front of a large church in Orvieto, and then we all got candles to carry. Some priests led a procession around the outer edges of the town, and we stopped at 14 different spots where they led the liturgy of the stations of the cross. Because Orvieto is situated on top of really sheer, dramatic cliffs, we had amazing views of the countryside at night during the walk! The entire path was also lit up by small candles. The candles and the priests led us to another church in the very center of Orvieto, where priests placed a crucifix at the altar and led the liturgy of the last station.
Our class also did a much smaller version of a Via Crucis. Right now, half of us are taking the poetry class and the other half is taking a painting class. The art students each painted a station of the cross, and we each wrote a poem about one of the stations. On the Thursday before Easter, our whole group went to a nearby park to look at the paintings and read through the poems for each station. The Catholic version of the Via Crucis focuses entirely on Jesus’ suffering and concludes before his resurrection. It was a new, but really valuable experience for me to spend so much time meditating on His path to the cross, rather than rushing right to the resurrection. The station that I wrote my poem about is called ‘Jesus Falls for the Third Time’ and it refers to when Jesus falls at the foot of Golgotha on his way to the cross. My poem is basically a personal reaction to this station of the Cross
Jesus Falls The Third Time.
Why three?
Wasn’t once enough
To prove him willing, submissive?
How could they watch him three times?
Foot tumbling over rutted ground, cross scraping
and tearing the wounds on his back.
Wasn’t once enough for them
To see gashes and glazed eyes and
notice bruises blackening his ribs?
Why three?
Were his stumbles literally three
Or three symbolic and endless?
Three falls are too many,
Three nights of Sheol too much,
The cost of sin too high.
Three is awful.
It is extravagant.
It is enough.
Other than celebrating Easter over this past weekend, life in Orvieto has been pretty normal. A lot of runs outside along the cliffs, cappuccino, attempts to write and analyze poetry, and conversations and daily life with the other students here. Our big project this month is a portfolio of twelve poems and reflections on life and art in Orvieto. Since I have never really focused on writing poetry before, it’s been a little bit of a struggle to get into the discipline of writing, editing, and improving my work every day. This poem that I wrote captures some of the ‘normal-ness’ of life in Orvieto because it talks about my relationship with the other Italian families who live in my apartment building, which is located on Via Postierla. One thing to know before you read the poem: the bottom floor of the building is an aerobics studio that blasts American music at all hours. Think Ke$ha, Lady GaGa…
Neighbors
I don’t often hear other voices in Via Postierla.
Their quiet lives fade, muted by the pulse
of the aerobics studio downstairs.
We have exchanged no words, but
Ciao and Buona sera
except when the woman across the hall
jabbed the doorbell and lectured me
with sweeping gestures and staccato Italian.
I see them through doorways and bannisters
caught in Polaroid minutes.
Architecture provides the momentary
import of a thing surrounded but
I do not know how to give
these snapshot people due regard.
I often watch a woman and her old, old mother
inching down the stairs arm in arm.
The mother’s wrists are frail as Murano glass
but the daughter grips them, determined.
I stare at this photo of filial care.
I wonder, do they have worries like my own,
these snapshot people? Broken dryers,
ants in the kitchen, moldy bathrooms.
When they step out from our shared staircase,
do they dance to the echoes of top 40 songs?
Italy’s rolling cadences sound fuzzy in my American ears
and my American eyes have faulty lenses because
people are not flat and they are not simple and
they are not snapshots.
