Upon Realization of the Poet's Duty

The European Statue Poem (Preferably Italian)

Defy the pigeons, Sir,
they’re all the legion you have
left. Below you, on the square, Fiats purr
and putter, while the Sunday hurdy-gurdy, squat
antique, grinds out his own reprieve.

Your posture, Sir, does not
match step with afternoon disorder. Sun and stucco cannot change your lot.
You stand abrupt, commanding, on your charger, jut
your shoulder’s armor none the less

for watching grime and spatter etch the years upon your horse’s
rump, and seeing state and merchant run your lot
of outranked peers into the sun-stained ground to rot.
Today you’ve pigeons, no ground forces.

The Unquestionable Translation

(Preferably Icelandic)

This winter the ice clapped down
like a pot lid on the bay.
Our boats lie, round and brown
as rats, on the shore.
My nets are drying,
in the eaves; and the youngest,
still at her breast,
cries when the light comes,
earlier each morning.
She is silent.
Yesterday, a gull rolled, pattering,
down the roof,
to the ground yard,
nearly dead from starving.
I sit, warming, before the fire.