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http://www.auroraghielmini.com/illustrazione/the-baron-in-the-trees/

http://www.highdesertgallery.info/2007/07/index.html

THE BARON IN THE TREES

(after Calvino)


Cosimo is up a tree
living among oaks,
eucalpytus, sweet chestnuts
and copper beeches.

The black of the Spanish contingent
hanging over boughs like so many Goyescas.

Minutes turn to years;
inventive, he builds tree-houses,
stationed at intervals in the woods
like forts in a Roman wall.

Standing on a branch, a bird in the hand,
motionless for hours.

He misses nothing of ordinary life
in his arboreal existence,
conducting a lengthy courtship
with a young woman in the garden below;
apples on his breath, sinewy
green hands.