Viva Bartali! E-Book

Damian Walford Davies

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 41

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Inspired by the lyrical, mythic mode of Italian sports journalism from the 1930s to the 1950s, Viva Bartali! is a biography-in-verse of the iconic Italian cyclist Gino Bartali (1914—2000), two-time winner of the Tour de France (1938, 1948), known both as 'Gino the Pious' because of his fervent Catholic faith, and as Ginettaccio ('Gino the Terrible'), owing to the short shrift he so often gave the Press. Conjuring Bartali at crux moments in his personal and professional career, through joy and tragedy, defeat and victory, the collection places us alongside the young rider proving his mettle and adding to his palmarès in the edgy atmosphere of Mussolini's Fascist Italy, whose political ideology he loathed. From amateur races to the professional one-day classics and on to Tour de France glory, Bartali is seen alongside his fellow riders as both vulnerable body and élite athlete; both cycling's hard man and fond and bereaved father; both kneeling believer and climbing god. The collection gives us an insight into the complex relationship that underpinned his great rivalry with the campionissimo ('champion of champions') Fausto Coppi – the 'man of glass' against Bartali's 'man of iron'. It was a rivalry that a divided a nation and defined a sport. We are with Bartali at the 1948 Tour de France when he takes a phone call from the Italian prime minister, who asks him to do his part in diffusing a political crisis that could have tipped over into violence. And we witness his remarkable secret missions in the saddle as a courier throughout Tuscany during World War 2, carrying forged identity documents that helped save the lives of hundreds of Italian Jews. It was a deed he never spoke about – one for which he was named 'Righteous Among the Nations' by Yad Vashem in 2013. "A fascinating, original take on the epic life and career of an Italian hero." John Foot, author of 'Pedalare! Pedalare!' "Stylish and sophisticated, this poetic record of an extraordinary life confirms Damian Walford Davies' status as one of the finest poets writing in Wales today." Jem Poster

Leseprobe

Viva Bartali!

for

Bronwen Price

velocista

and

Matthew Williams

scalatore

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Suite 6, 4 Derwen Road, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 1LH

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

twitter@SerenBooks

The right of Damian Walford Davies to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Damian Walford Davies, 2023

ISBN: 9781781727089

Ebook: 9781781727096

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Books Council of Wales.

Cover artwork: Gino Bartali at the Giro di Lombardia, 1952.

Printed in Bembo by Severn, Gloucester

Contents

Ponte a Ema

Vista

Resurrection

Yolks

Amateur

Prayer

Succession

Anointing

Adriana

Martyr

Solo

Tongue

Fiat 508 ‘Balilla’

Vault

Glacial

Revenant

Maglia Rosa

Order

Jordan

Commune

Vicarious

Posy

Capitano

Dog

Peau

Assumption

Choice

Dedication

Publicity

Mass

Headline

Signs

Acolyte

Draft

Marriage

Present

Blue

Nocturne

Screen

Commission

Drop

Diversion

Cache

Aubade

Ruota

Cellar

Strafe

Pastoral

Charity

Break

Oddments

Superannuate

Renaissance

Benediction

Plea

Selves

Pilgrim

Summit

Farfalle

Gino Bartali: Palmarès

Glossary

Acknowledgements and Afterword

Ponte a Ema

Tuscany, 1924

You’d wake to the tang

of lye ash soap, to women singing

on the river bank, beating laundry

vestment-white and laying it to dry

like snow on furze and rock.

From bridge to ox-bow bend,

the pools were fishless, fizzing,

glib with suds. Some days,

what brought you round like salts

was Primo’s dung cart, hauling

two weeks’ worth from sties and coops

to strew across the flint-set fields.

Opening the shutters on a frozen street,

raffia iron-hard around the balcony,

you’d watch your father move

from lamp to lamp down Crucifixion Lane,

mount his ladder, snuff each sallow

oilflame with a shale-cut hand.

Vista

Florence, 1926

The ride to school was on a cast-off

butcher’s bike, sin-black,

through lanes that dyed the tyres

white. You’d pass the blind man

on his daughter’s doorstep

crying Go, my boy!, a girl

with wasted legs propped

puppet-like against a wayside shrine.

Then up the killing incline, scrip

rebounding off your back, along

a line of cypress flames until

the terracotta city opened out

before you at Piazza Michelangelo,

where blackshirts massed

below the copy of the David,

the manboy’s weight thrown right,

a star of hair above the groin,

great lodes of blood across his hand.

Resurrection

Ponte a Ema, 1929

Midwinter afternoon, the cold

belligerent. A game of cops

and robbers, run all day in random

rat-tat-tats through barns

and steaming byres, gathered

to a shootout in the drifts

in Salvatore’s field, snowball-bullets

ripping through the Boys in Blue.

Later, trailing moons of lantern glow

along the ground, Babbo

found you where the Scarface Swells

had tommy-gunned you down –

snow-sepulchred, heartbeat

hibernation-slow, a chrysalis

that took six months to thaw

to speech, ragazzo-Lazarus

who somewhere in that whiteout

promised never to be killed again.

Yolks

1933

Your summer regimen: dawn raid

on Babbo’s hen-hutch, bantams

palmed aside for alabaster eggs

that clack inside your jersey’s

pouch; a flask of ebony espressos

with the taste of cigarettes;

the weighed canteen of water, gram-

precise; your one spare tyre, torqued

figure-of-eight across your back;

goggles for the Tuscan dust;

three rattled-through Hail Marys

for the road. The morning full of grace –

gathered to the wicked slug of coffee

at the San Donato bend,

and your breaking of the shells

against the handlebars, eggwhites

trailing from the metal, gold hearts

wolfed down on your slick descents.

Amateur

1934

The tyke who’d trailed you

from the shabby starting flag

you knew from afternoons

in dim repair shops, where they hung

new tyres to cure like eels

above the bench-end vices

and the shining virgin cogsets

stacked like secret currencies.

In the final cobbled sprint –

pitched towards a May Queen

cradling flagging flowers

on a cock-eyed dais –

you let him have the mercy

of your slipstream, knowing

from the way he broke

he’d never make it past his cousin’s

cast-off jersey and the pittance

of a feast-day parish purse.

Prayer

St Thérèse of Lisieux, 1873–97

St Thérèse, Little Flower –

keep us from the blind dog

blundering into our path;

the devils in the ruts; pride,

swaggering in victors’

yellow and pink. Be our shield

on broiling cols; steel us

for cloudburst and crosswind,

bullet-hail and brume’s

deceptions. Shepherd us

through corridors of grasping

hands and gurning faces;

gird us in the peloton’s

press; be lodestar on the lonely

breakaways. We have seen

Despair ride close beside us

on setts and cinderways.

Brace us; bring us home to flowers.

Succession

Giro d’Italia, 1935; Stage 6, Portocivitanova–L’Aquila, 25 May

Salt savour of the docklands start