The Race of the Candles

John Poch

I climb that I may be no longer blind.
—Purgatorio 26:58

By noon, we’ve hiked one half the mountain road
toward Saint Ubaldo, up from Gubbio,
this ancient town, her citizens in blue
or black or yellow shirts, red kerchiefs for
their throats a harmony among the crowd,
the masses who sing, drunkenly cling. Bells ring
from stone towers, drawing to the piazza
bands of flutes, horns, and drums. The people war
among themselves like children playing war,
their colors representative: the saints
of masons, merchants, or necessary farmers:
Antonio, Giorgio, then beloved Ubaldo,
the patron of this festival, this town
we’ve left below, departing for an hour
or two, uncertain what we’re looking for
up here, how long the walk, or how they’ll run
this evening’s race, their strongest men bearing
the sacred wooden candles ten feet tall
upon their shoulders (a dozen to each cero),
racing toward the saint who loves them all.

We’re only halfway to the pickled remains
of Ubaldo encased in glass atop the altar.
According to the chapel frescoes,
he held reluctantly the bishop’s reins
and humbly led outnumbered Umbrians
to necessary war, but more, forgiveness.
We can almost see the square, past cypresses,
through the hillside bushes clutching ditches
below this winding road, and you, my new wife,
trying to see, say you love your new life.

As if the worshipping world approves your bliss,
a distant roar arises like a wave,
another, then one more, and now we know
the candles have been hauled from where they’re kept
in the church, carried down the granite steps
into the stone piazza. The noon sun burns;
the young men lift the candles, like caskets turned
on end and into sudden wooden towers,
balanced, offered up for heaven’s sanction,
the pealing bells, the shouts for half an hour.
They’ve come to bless their patron saint again
by the light of the highest candle of the sun.
We didn’t understand the schedule, know
that noon begins the revelry below.

Gubbio, the town subject to fogs,
ancient home of Francis’ famous wolf
who made his peace with man and lesser dogs,
precipitous home to flashy festivals
of crossbows aiming for the truest mark
(the center bloody as a human heart),
of truffles white and aching with the flavor
of pure decay below an oaken fountain,
of candles carried with the love of labor,
of saintly love more zealous on the mountain
than hidden in a bushel, these candles run
Ingino’s thousand feet. Gubbio,
home of the greatest poet’s proudest friend:
Dante’s Oderisi who, with pen
in hand, his muscles aching, the whole day,
bent over a page, over an immense I
illuminating ink into an image,
a snake and ivy-strangled pillar holding
its own, a decorated character
for launching testaments, God’s character,
a border rising to a story, an homage
a gold-leaf halo renders holy, an I
rising beyond the skin of pages onto
a mountain ledge of words and drawn into
another skin: literal ecstasy.

Here we have risen by wedding, honeymoon,
and travel to our mountain afternoon.
Now curves and trees of the steep hillside occlude
our view. We kneel and rise and kneel once more,
to no avail. We hear the piazza roar
and see its churning, bright periphery
shift like a moving wave that, spilled to shore,
pulls back to darkness, heaving mystery.
Like this, time’s shadow moves until the laps
repeat themselves upon a moment’s place
through miracle of memory. Perhaps
the shoulder’s edge, the hunger in your eyes
restores to me another story: noon
when Dante and his friend Farese walked,
condemning the excessive love of food
and drink, of earthly goods, and talked
of memory, but more the coming sweet
new style, the intellect of ladies, gentle,
thin elegance of wintering cranes in flight
forming into Vs and simply rendered.

And then, a candle races down a street!
Can we turn back, go down for what we’re missing?
I’m torn, halfway between the host below—
this invisible rabble, these revel-loving living—
and the hill, the grave above, still Saint Ubaldo,
who built on the ruins of Iguvium
God’s fortress, a city lifted toward religion,
among fresh flowers, mostly roses, laid
in his simple chapel telling all his story:
the legend of a life and death remembered
in frescoes, pamphlets, voices in the nave
praying, preparing for the coming glory
of candles to the citizens surrendered,
not coming yet, but topped with puppet saints
just down the mountainside and carried through
the streets, each racing with its retinue.
Should we turn back? What do we want? Descent?
We long to howl among the half-drunk men,
white throats, red scarves, these human candles all
ardent to carry the burden of a saint
of eight proud centuries, now passing by
the offerings of warm biscotti, wine,
and water, a holy meal half for the show,
half nourishment, and passing by each wall,
stacked, mortared, white and gray flecked, sparkling stones
hewn from this very mountain on which we stand
to serve as streets and walls, so set by hands
building a story, passed to generations
passing another candle hurtling through
the crowded street, candles almost crashing,
passing, passing, passing the faces passing
away, running, shadowed shoulder to shoe,
telling the hour, the inextricable tie
to work, the colors, blood. In short, we die.

And yet, to be exactly here, to hear
somewhere in the bush behind a sparrow stir
the present into place. And, feathery,
I fall into another reverie.

What was it that you said in our hotel
the other night? Perugia, warm, we held
each other drunk and glistening after love.
You called me by a nearby city’s name,
touching my ear. You meant to make me laugh,
but I felt built of great stones, bread, and fountains—
all Abraham-and-Isaac on the mountain,
God-exhausted, purified and saved,
the knife of evening lowering beside us.

But never have we been more love-alive
than on this simple precipice which guides us
halfway to the death of who we are
today, toward Saint Ubaldo’s rest, displayed
to teach us this dry mountain road must rise
to lift us all upon his bone-cold altar,
white marble artfully carved, fearfully made,
our mortal burden more beautiful because
we love and worship beyond knowledge and time.

So worldly, are we doomed to chase a boulder
down the hill of school, our lessons learned,
of work—or can we learn to love our lots,
wear scarlet on our throats to signify
our end, wear each red sound around our words,
carry our less than subtle candle high?

The bells below now hold their tongues, the piazza
empties, the unruly run through the streets begun.
Turning away, I take you by the hand,
and pull you closer still, the candle of
our affection humbled under noon. We stand
here in the new life we have found, and love
each face upon the other’s neck. Content,
we both let go and turn toward the road:
the climb begins again toward our saint,
out of our shadows. The faint perfume of the rose
is the dying to open finally to close.

Visit John Poch as Image Artist of the Month for April '06

Issue #47 • Fall 2005