Give me a name
and let me tell you what it stands for.
A chair is simply a chair. A daffodil just that.
But say Wordsworth
and it’s daffodils and lake and wind.
Say Shakespeare and it’s
to be or not to be
and the shoemaker’s sole.
Robert Burns is
a wee timorous mouse
Robert Frost
snow and mending walls.
Calvino invisible cities,
Caspar Friedrich and Cosmos.
Rembrandt and hands,
Bach and St. Matthew.
Only vicariously known,
but then there are those
whose names conjure up themselves.
Mario and Adamo,
Remo, Leo, Jean
Richard, Thomas,
Cecilia and San Carlo Borromeo,
Nennella, Annie.
A summing of a past
without which I would not be me.
Erika Bizzarri 