Explore "The Costa San Giorgio" by Mina Loy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We English make a tepid blot / On the messiness / Of the passionate Italian life-traffic / Throbbing the street / up / steep / Up / up / to the porta / Culminating / In the stained fresco of the dragon-slayer / The hips of women sway / Among the crawling children they produce / And the church hits the barracks / Where / The greyness of marching men / Falls through the greyness of stone / Oranges half-rotten are sold at a reduction / Hoarsely advertised as broken heads / Broken heads / and the barber / Has an imitation mirror / And Mary preserve our mistresses from seeing us as we see ourselves / Shaving / Ice cream / Licking is larger than mouths / Boots than feet / Slip / Slap / and the string dragging / And the angle of the sun / Cuts the whole lot in half / And warms the folded hands / Of a consumptive / Left outside / her chair is broken / And she wonders how we feel / For we walk very quickly / The noonday cannon / Having scattered the neighbour's pigeons / The smell of small cooking / From luckier houses / Is cruel to the maimed cat / Hiding / Among carpenter's shavings / From three boys / -One holding a bar --
Who nevertheless / Born of human parents / Cry when locked in the dark / Fluidic blots of sky / Shift among roofs / Between bandy legs / Jerk patches of street / Interrupted by clacking / Of all the green shutters / From which / Bits of bodies / Variously leaning / Mingle eyes with the commotion / For there is little to do / The false pillow-spreads / Hugely initialed / Already adjusted / On matrimonial beds / And the glint on the china virgin / Consummately dusted / Having been thrown / Anything or something / That might have contaminated intimacy / Out / Onto the middle of the street