24 hours in Firenze

Enter Easter
rain

driving through
a landscape of marble churches,
cobblestone filth
and triumphant Madonnas
hoisted on walls and altars
following crosses through streets,
into processions of devout,
divine, divided hoards
of people and tourists
- all strangers from foreign lands,
travellers through time,
periods and histories
of a world painted in brush strokes
sculpted in stone,
installed on corners
in piazzas and palazzos
that invade the orthography of a sterile mind