Hecht saw a hill here.

It turned out to be a vision

of Poughkeepsie:

half symbol, half memory.

And in a memorable

mostly forgotten phrase

William Dean Howells

said here lies the home of human nature.

Glück studied the moon above it

while reinventing Pavese

for the first time.

As if it were a sore subject

nettling a family, her country

remains unnamed.

Her village is any village,

her lettuces plain lettuce.

McHugh found poetry

in the silence of its statues

and when Hugo heard

Kennedy had been shot

Italians chased him across the square.

At their “noisy knives” of “why”

he wept like a “perfect wop.”

Wilbur fell in love with the music

a wall-fountain made

but by the end of the century

Henri Cole found nothing there

but bobbing Fanta cans,

a kind of poetry dead,

and the freedom one feels

when things have changed for good.