Blog

28th July, 2023

Friday Poem: ‘Publicity’ by Damian Walford Davies

This cover shows a colour photograph of cyclist Gina Bartali riding through a cheering crowd.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Publicity’ by Damian Walford Davies from his new collection Viva Bartali!. Damian is launching the book at St Illtud’s Church in Llantwit Major on Wednesday 2nd July with Bardic Vintage Books. Contact the shop for details. 

Publicity
Piazza del Duomo, Florence, August 1938.

They wheeled you out in yellow, 
posed you, buttressed, on the bucktooth

cobbles of the square, feet fast
inside the pedals' cages, hunkered

on your handlebars. Each bulbflash volley 
washed your oiled hair white

They sent you clockwise round 
the duomo, talked you into tearing 

back again, teeth bared, to take 
a seat behind a sculpted table 

brokered from a banker's rooms
and sign, all afternoon, the ziggurats 

of cards until the line gave out at six 
with Giotto's bells. For the child 

in wooden splints you drew a massif
of serrated peaks, yourself the small, 

capped stickman on the last ascent – 
gravity-confounding, somehow hanging on.