Classic Poem

Luckily the sun isn't out and the snow
will lie on the ground fully several days more,
but the sun meanwhile must be sure to stay in
or the least tongue of heat will lick it away,
this infantile flurry of two nights ago
akin to frail moths instead of real snow.
And Italians who've been out of jobs for a year
will be out of jobs for another or two
unless they can urge this thin crust to last
through wits bent to guile and hands to deceit
by using their picks like engravers a pen
etching faint patterns on durable stone,
or converting their shovels to garden spades
exquisitely dreading the hurt they might deal
to tiny invisible early spring flowers
by charging, instead of caressing the snow,
with swooping gestures from operas.
As it is there's truly no soil down below,
but sidewalks meant for pedestrians
and the road between, scarce three strides across,
for slow moving vehicles, cars once an hour,
mules, a horse or two, donkeys and dogs;
and a few little paths, the important in town,
like the one to the steamer which must be kept free
to keep us in touch with the rest of the lake,
as well as paths to the principal shops,
the grocer's, the chemist's, the town hall,
not to mention that den, most important of all,
the cafe where gossip is cheaper than air.
How I love to gossip, I'm gadding astray,
would have almost forgotten what further to say
if I didn't behold those artisans now
leaning on shovels and chinning their picks
like Victor Emmanuel, elbow on sword —
(if a town has a statue and only one square
it's Italy's first king brooding there!)
Loafing on jobs brings food in abundance
or the longer one's labor the higher one's pay,
and the richer, more varied the talk which ensues
the sooner the moment the snow, lying flat
or in harmless mounds, will change into ice.
If the sun should emerge, be it only a peep,
a knife down each heart would drive fatally deep,
and the bobbing about of these actor-folk
would be something as poignant as men stricken low
straining and squirming for strength to exist.
For the ice that was snow into water will run,
talk will be hushed, and the gestures and all
the scheming and guile and the brave deceit
ride off on the stream to oblivion.
There'll be frantic attempts to catch water on shovels,
toss treacherous fluid on top of snow-carts,
and this won't be funny, ironic or droll,
but many a body clutching his soul.
The blue which they cherish, pray to or eye
will be utterly dismal, hatefully black;
were it only a chink that appears in the sky
it'll mean that dread crater and furnace, the sun,
must undo the soft pity the clouds had begun
unveiling in winter the very first snow
to give such Italians their jobs down below.
For if that mad sun press one look through a hole
the hole will tear open as wide as a sea,
the clouds driven off by an avalanched blue,
and the stream that was ice into torrents will speed
and drag human hopes with inhuman greed,
and this will be tragic, the defeat of a goal,
and many a body bereft of its soul!