There Is Florence And There Is Firenze. Firenze Is The Place Where The Citizens Of The Capital Of Tuscany

“There is Florence and there is Firenze. Firenze is the place where the citizens of the capital of Tuscany live and work. Florence is the place where the rest of us come to look. Firenze goes back around two thousand years to the Romans and, at least in legend, the Etruscans. But Florence was founded in perhaps the early 1800s when expatriate French, English, Germans, and not a few Americans settled here to meditate on art and the locale—the genius of the place—that produced it. Over the next two centuries a considerable part of the rest of the world followed them for shorter visits—“visit” being derived from the Latin vistare, “to go to see,” and, further back, from videre, simply “to see”—in the form of what came to be called tourism. The Florentines are here, as they have always been, to live and work; to primp, boast, cajole, and make sardonic, acerbic asides; to count their money and hoard their real estate, the stuff—la roba—in their attics and cellars, and their secrets. We are here for the view.”

— Robert Clark, Dark Water: Art, Disaster, and Redemption in Florence

“My memory is like a pomegranate. Shall I open it over you and let it scatter, seed by seed: red pearls befitting a farewell that asks nothing of me except forgetfulness?”

— Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence

Who should your Patron Saint be?

There again is memory at my doorstep– jasmine crushed under departing feet. The moon extinguishes its silver pain on the window.

—Agha Shahid Ali, section 4 of “From Another Desert,” A Nostalgist’s Map of America: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013)

Kenneth Koch, To Marina