Firenze

This is a city of faces;
on statues and doorways,
fountains and facades and people,
this is a place of expressions.

The merchant and his masks;

the tourist, torn between offense
and flattery at the first man
to stare like that in years;

the scowling head of a brass lion who,
were he not embedded in a door,
sentenced to gnaw on a ring
for eternity, would burst forth,
disembodied and wild.