Saba's Bookshop

There is a street in Trieste where I see myself
mirrored in long days of closed shutters:
Via del Lazaretto Vecchio.
Among houses like hospices, ancient, identical,
it has one note, only one, of brightness,
the sea, at the bottom of its side streets.
Perfumed with spices and tar
from warehouses with their desolate facades
the trade is in nets, cordage for ships: one shop
has a banner for its emblem; inside, turned
towards the passer-by, women, who rarely
merit a glance, with bloodless faces bent
over the colors of every nation,
serve out the sentence that is
their lives: innocent prisoners
gloomily stitching cheerful ensigns.