Note: On the night of November 4, 1966 the Arno overflowed, reaching 10 feet above street level. It filled many of Florence’s historic streets, museums, churches, and libraries with mud. After the disaster, citizens and foreigners living in Florence took to the streets, museums, and libraries to salvage masterpieces and manuscripts from the mud, in the most uncomfortable conditions, to assist with the massive spontaneous cleanup effort. They were called Gli Angeli di Fango – Mud Angels.
Revisionist textbooks muddy the waters, stories change with time,
each teller leaving their mark, some etch it on the wall, a “never forget”
cautionary warning: rivers will turn to rapids, rush and overflow, torrents
of water will mix with oil from upturned cars, will submerge church
pews, swallow statues, erase manuscripts, threaten to wash away
every last supper. Tombs of patriarchs never meant for burial at sea
will sink; Michelangelo and Machiavelli’s inscriptions read by bottom
feeders, Dante seeming to float among cars, mud and sewage, the four stone
lions and their shields on which he stood invisible, the stone poet’s slippers
poised to walk on water.
Even as the deluge recedes, your city will be plunged into cold darkness,
the dirt-laden oil slick will remain, you will slip on streets littered with animal
corpses, rotting debris and raw waste, there will be food shortages, no power,
no potable water, you will bathe in the filthy river and brush your teeth with wine.
We venerate the dead Masters, weep at the senseless devastation, the irreplaceable
loss. We mobilize our energy, our time, our money. And so the angels came
to save manuscripts, paintings, the cold smooth stone, to clean and dry, to restore
threatened cultural patrimony.
There is no such outcry over blood tides that overflow the Dnieper, the Amper,
the Aras and the Kura, created by surges of hate, reason muddied by righteousness
swirling with rubbish, the downrush of nationalism’s wild waters fomented
to submerge, erase whole peoples.
When flood tides ebb, the stories of what – who – was lost, get handed down
generation to generation. Not all are told. Masterpieces have been plundered
or burnt, houses of worship rubbled. Some protagonists are deemed unworthy
of story, others lack survivors to repeat their names.
How to heed the inscription plaques that mark how high the river once swelled?
Best not to toss bits of hatred in the water, nor slick oily rhetoric that poisons
predator and prey. Best to become our own mud angels, valuing our neighbors’
canvases, handiwork, pages, brushing off any detritus that sticks and sullies,
restoring and cleaning all we hold dear. Best to write the one small volume
of our story, in our lengua materna. Only we know what it is to live in our skin,
linked to lives shaped by skin, connected by covenants of skin, of beliefs,
our story of welcome and exile. Best to find a place on the highest shelf, above
where the next flood can reach. Slip it in, nice and tight, somewhere
a finger or eye will trace its spine, draw us to mind even if no one reads it.