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.