LOSS OF INNOCENCE

I wrote this short poem whilst holidaying in Florence at the start of the year when we spent much of our time visiting palazzi and marvelling at the abundance of great art on display.
Those were the carefree days, pre-Covid, when terms like quarantine, self-isolation and social-distancing where not part of our vocabulary and the very idea of donning masks to shop was unthinkable.
Little did we know how cataclysmic the year 2020 would turn out to be. 

PALAZZO IN FLORENCE

We drift from gallery, slowly,

to gallery, awed by art

from centuries ago,

the images from Scripture, 

so eerily familiar:

Nativity, the Miracles,  

the Crucifixion on the hill,

the empty tomb, the martyred saints, 

the centuries of Christian wars,  

and further back in time, Man’s fall, 

the cursed beginning of it all.