Married Again
Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet
Married Again
The bright Tuscan hills
lay in checkered vineyards,
as the path spread before our feet,
walking into the twenty first year
of marriage, recalling to us the aisle of
first consent. When ahead and unlooked for
a figure, aproned, approaching,
beckoning and biblical, opening
his strong earthen face and hands
overwhelming any doubt
that we were called to the
spreading bride-white forest table.
He, Dario, the local butcher
exuding unbridled invitation,
like Jesus fresh from the resurrection
drew our company
from the path to a glade
in which he was to marry in a weeks time.
Offering soft bread
with thymed lamb, pouring the Tuscan
red clemency, our watery hopes made wine.
Our hearts extending
beyond the fences of what
normally would hem in our life.
And then he went before us
into his own Galilee - Panzano,
his shop a white tiled grandfathered gift.
In the corner an old statue,
with a man's bare chest,
a butchers apron and a great bull's head.
Dario steps up
onto his butchers block
atop the white counter's cliff,
Dante's Canto springs
from him like an oratorio
all sweeping arms and passion
And the story, Francesca and Paulo's
forbidden love, rich like strong meat
a weeping butcher in the second circle of hell.
After, we stood amazed,
dared by this man of earth
to enlarge the compass of our appreciation.
Married again to soil and beast,
soul and sorrow, dust and death, blood
and life, knowing ourselves to be consummated.
And this renewed marriage more
beguiling than the first, daring us
to believe in the wonder of our own walking.In 2010 we were preparing to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary by having our house double glazed, the height of romance! At that time I happened to attend a set of gatherings known as a Salon Series hosted by the poet David Whyte in the Cotswolds. It was my entry into writing poetry as I approached my fiftieth birthday. I thought spending time in the presence of a poet I admired would help me understand whether I had what it takes to become one. I will write of that odyssey in the next substack, but suffice to say David and I, both being Northerners (he is from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire), struck up a friendship. This was cemented by a suggestion he made to me when I told him we were about to be twenty years married.
‘What are you doing?’ he enquired. I mentioned the double glazing and he made a face and said that signing up for his Italian walking tour would be far more epic and appropriate. When I returned home to Wilma and launched his suggestion, she initially warmed to the idea until we looked the trip up on David’s website and realised that it would cost about the same as the double glazing! However, the more we sat with the prospect of eight days in Tuscany and I wanged on about the kind of magic that seemed to happen around Mr Whyte we finally succumbed to the idea. To be fair to Wilma it was more my desire than hers, but she loves me, even after twenty years (and hopefully now 35).
We avidly read the sign up forms and information that demanded a level of fitness to be able to engage in hikes. We even did a little spot of training in our own Rivelin Valley. We flew to Florence in order to meet up with David and his other guests, staying the night in the beautiful hotel Baglioni in the centre of that wonderful city. We wandered the Ponte Vecchio in the morning and Wilma bemoaned the idea that we were going to be shoved together with a load of people we didn’t know for eight days when we could just have a romantic Tuscan week on our own. She also made it clear that whatever the itinerary was she had plenty of books and would mainly keep herself to herself, being a huge introvert.
We fetched our cases and made our way to the designated meeting point - a carpark above the city. There we were greeted by the sight of four white vans and a gaggle of mainly Americans all excited and voluble. Wilma gave me a very meaningful look as we were packed into one of the vans driven by a young irishman full of banter. We all followed David’s 4X4 out of Florence and into the Tuscan hills.
Things then took a turn for the better, we arrived at the most beautiful set of villas perching in the middle of vineyards and olive groves. We had a suite of rooms and though Wilma piled the books she had bought at the side of our capacious bed, she read hardly a word. The wonderful combination of people attracted to David’s work and the two Irish brothers who doubled up as van drivers and artistic accompaniment to the poetry created a magical atmosphere. We asked David’s other drivers Troy and Julie what to expect. ‘Don’t’ they said ‘just let it happen’. We took the advice, after an evening walk to an Etruscan tomb and a wonderful chianti aided sleep we settled into the pattern of the week. Breakfast on the loggia and then music from Owen & Michael Ó Súilleabháin creating a musical pillow for David’s hypnotic style of recitation and elucidation to float upon. The afternoon gave the chance for adventure. David’s old friend Lori de Mori an American food writer had introduced David to many of the incredible places and people that Tuscany held.
After Davids’s morning session we were told to get ready for a fair hike after lunch and so suitably booted we piled into the vans and headed off for a walk to a town called Panzano. We set off at our usual pace and quickly found ourselves at the head of the column with Lori (who had just walked the Camino), we were fitter than most apparently. Suddenly we were greeted by the sight that is the photo at the head of this post and forms the opening of the poem, a figure in white approaching us. He was tall and beckoning and Wilma and I had that imposter feeling that his gestures surely weren’t meant for us.
They were, however, and his name was Dario Cecchini an eighth generation Italian Butcher with a shop in Panazano. He and his staff had laid on a spread for us in the woods. Roast lamb, red wine, and soft white bread with what we took to be white cheese but was actually pork fat (dripping). One of the more health conscious Americans commented ‘Oh my god cholesterol on bread!’ It was incredibly tasty, however, and an introduction to a philosophy of living and eating that Dario is the embodiment of.
If you want to hear more of his thinking and passion there is a wonderful show on Netflix called the Chef’s Table and he is featured in Volume 6 Episode 2. The man that you will see there is just the same as the man I describe in my poem, larger than life. I asked him what kind of thyme he seasoned the lamb with on that afternoon and he reached down to the ground and picked a sprig. He then introduced us to his fiancé whom he was to marry on that very spot the week after. David recited poem about marriage and tears were shed. He told us he would go ahead of us to his shop and we should follow.
When we arrived it was as I portray it. It reminded me of the butchers shops in the Castle Market in Sheffield when I was a boy. The power of inheritance and tradition. Then he actually put his white apron on the butcher’s block on top of the counter, climbed up there, and recited Canto five of the Comedia, a terrible and tragic prefiguring of Romeo and Juliet about Paulo Malatesta and Francesca di Rimini. I whispered to Wilma it was as if we were in a film.
Love led us to one death, conjointly felled.
For him who slew us, Cäina waits below.”
Such were the words that they had brought for me.
When I had heard the story of their woe,
I bowed my head and slumped dejectedly.
Canto V - Inferno - Divine Comedy - Dante
The whole week was a series of magical events springing from the ordinary soil of Tuscany. We reflected on the flight home that we did not seem to find the same element of magic in our own home. I said that it must be there somewhere and we should look for it. The Sheffield version of it. I would say that my last book A Sheffield Traipsing is the fruit of that realisation and search. I finally found the wonder of my own walking.
Adrian,
Thanks for a lovely reflection, and the encouragement to spend $$ on an experience such as this, rather than the window glazing.
Although, sitting by a well-sealed window in winter is also a pleasure. I hope you eventually got them glazed!
Lovely poem and story! And fun to hear about your first walking tour adventure 😊