On Seeing San Gimignano from the Colne, MW Bewick

The clouds were gelato, fior di latte scoops and none of us
Learning what came next, out of the estuary across the unforgettable
Enlightenment of sky. Because of it, everything from that decade
Looks like a cliché now. The T-shirt slogans lasted well into term
And all through the welcomes that rallied the headline news
In medieval cycles of hype and spin, those modern bodies
Jostled in the paternoster with the naivety of hopeless leaves.

We were lifting the grammar of painting our own renaissance palazzo, 
A vision of how each bright but narrow critique could be
Caressed into action. Primary impressions were itemised in Tuscany
While the saints we wanted to change in ourselves were manifested
In other objects, the relics of minor basilicas, the frescoed translations
And dancing economies of cigarette money, canteen plates and béton brut.

When we returned years later it was almost autumn once again.
It was just the air with its pitch of spring and us in a muddle
About the various positions the river had taken up in its dwelling
In our imaginations. At the boundaries the reflective controls were little
More than signifiers, blue riders degenerating in the mellowing gaze
And elevating how we felt about it all, how we were itching and smart
Or another notion of progress and paid-up assimilation, waving at us
From along the trail, rising with the wood pigeons to the towers.

We briefly stopped a moment, seeing for the first time in a while
How all the centuries live in the scrubby hollows of the path,
Away from all the tacit bureaucracy, in a kind of idealistic haiku
With this ascending to that, and that, but always with a concrete sense
Of independence, and I think, when I think, it was where students later
Chalked up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the steps
Where we briefly stopped a moment and where, I guess, we started
To forget the sky, and began to fall in love.