Best Ancona Poems
Anxious in Ancona (1)
His plan, as he’s boarding his baldachined barge
en route for the easterly sea,
(arthritis allowing) is giving it large,
but the pain is as bad as can be:
though Rome is his home, he must go and take charge:
Cortona is cortisone-free.
One thousand four hundred the Christian years
(and then we’ll add sixty-four more):
Pope Pius the Second, that subtlest of seers,
is bound for the Umbrian shore.
He’s even less warlike than Billie Joe Spears,
but wants to be wading through gore.
He’s running a fever, his legs have ballooned,
but he won’t be deflected or swayed.
He’ll not be impugned or dragooned or lampooned:
undampened his rodomontade:
the mention of mercy, mere salt in the wound –
hell-bent on a pious crusade.
The portents are palsied: a bargeman is drowned:
this project is just getting sillier.
“Venetians are keeping us hanging around:
we can hire troops for Tyre in Sicilia.”
The Middle East! Pius wants boots on the ground
(now why does that sound so familiar?)
The ominous omens are gathering thickly,
but no-one could call him a quitter.
He’s scrofulous, suffering, sallow and sickly,
but boyishly buoyant, not bitter.
They land him on sand on the strand of Otricoli,
and lift him aloft in a litter.
Anxious in Ancona (2)
The Doge has apportioned a fleet for his use,
but is proving an Indian giver.
A pope with a navy (and with a screw loose)
is no-one’s idea of chopped liver,
so Venice, delaying and playing obtuse,
is selling the pope down the river.
A Christian army, devoted to God,
is what Pius imagines he’s shaping,
but this one is riding distinctly rough-shod:
Ancona’s awash with the scrapings
of Europe: and here, where the Caesars once trod,
they are busily looting and raping.
There ain’t going to be any ardent crusade,
and Pius is dying, for certain.
They’ve all came to nothing, those plans that he laid,
and his project has gone for a burton.
To stop him from seeing his “army”, his aide
has fastened the litter’s gauze curtain.
He thought to have fought at the head of a host:
but reality isn’t like that.
We babble and squabble, we brag and we boast,
but our fantasies always fall flat.
Poor Pius was no Alexander. At most,
he was sort of an Anwar Sadat.
We curse our ill fortune and, wringing our hands,
we wail at our undeserved lot.
But is it so rare, as we formulate plans,
to end up with diddly squat?
If that’s how it goes with the Number One man,
what chance have the rest of us got?