The Triumph of Death at Pisa and Premonitions

The famous frescos in the Campo Santo at Pisa painted in the 1340's include striking images of "The Triumph of Death," "The Devil," "Hell", and "The Last Judgement." The cemetery of the Campo Santo contains shiploads of earth imported from the Holy Land. The Campo Santo was damaged by Allied air strikes during World War II. The restoration of the frescos revealed the drawings beneath the frescos, which have also been meticulously and wonderully restored. I visited Pisa three times to see the Leaning Tower, which I climbed on my first visit, now no longer permitted. It was a dizzying and unbalanced experience, a feeling that produced new insights and ideas. At my home one evening rocking in my family rocker where my mother rocked and nursed her eight children, I almost lost my balance and tipped over backward, which made me think of The Leaning Tower of Pisa and Galileo's experiments with gravity there. I also remembered that Copernicus lived in a leaning tower. The opening passage of my poem reproduces the feeling of being out-of-balance. The "Premonitions" poems are fitting prophecies.

Dettagli