June 16, 2010
Outside the gates of Florence, there is a small Jewish cemetery – crumbled and broken gravestones can be read only by a familiar eye. In this nearly abandoned and neglected place, the walls are high and visitors few. Long ago, Jews could not be buried within the city, and this crumpled, pocketed patch of land is barnacled to the walls, by the gate, along the Arno, all tilted and disheveled yet very much alive.
I spent a week there, working with my broken cameras amidst the snakes and snapdragons.
On a June afternoon, there was but one mourner, come to visit the graves.
The Mourner – Florence Old Jewish Cemetery
The Florentine sun bleaches everything to white and grey, and the stones too hot to touch.
In the grasses, green lizards gasp.
The crumpled, shattered, tombstones bearing messages in Hebrew – notes of love and life and birth and death.
In the shadows, a visitor.
The Mourner
Do not disturb his conversation. He is not as alone as he might seem.
With whom does he commune?
The unseen citizens of Florence, who waft amongst us with a sigh, a smile, a glance that suggests only cats and the great beyond know how silly are our sad concerns.
The Mourner
He visits in the afternoon, when none other comes.
The old conversations resume: politics, an uncomfortable pillow in the coffin, perhaps.
Or news of who has tempted who from beyond the Bima, and which besheret won her heart…
Results of the Monday horseraces. How the new shoes used to hurt. Which memories of the future have come true?
In the heat, the grasses snap.
The mourner dusts the seed pods off the marble, and the lichens scramble to avoid the sun.
What ancient romance does he now regard? With what beloved does he commune? Whose body buried in the tomb softened by his fur?
Reborn, does he keep his vow to watch a crypt?
It is June in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Florence, and the mourner is here.
A tail embraces a stone. A claw caresses marble with a scratch – a catty epitaph.
Whiskers twitch with the vanished passing of a white lace skirt.
The Mourner