Ferlinghetti writes of the disappearance of his San Francisco in "The Old Italians Dying"; the disappearance of the international place, with its many faces, facets and quirks that he winds his poetry through. Throughout his collection of San Francisco Poems Ferlinghetti heralds San Francisco as a place apart, a place where things are possible like nowhere else. Not only are the old Italians dying, but Ferlinghetti's San Francisco in dying.
Ferlinghetti moves from the panoramic to the individual. We begin with a wide angle view of "all over America" and zoom inwards to "Washington Square", then further to "Washington Square San Francisco", then to the "Church of Peter & Paul" and finally to the "old men who are still alive." This locates the reader in a specific place and with a specific group of people who are witnessing the passing of an era, of a generation. Although the poem references Italians dying all over America, the ones who seem to matter are the ones in San Francisco, and this zoom effect highlights the specific locality.
Dante's Paradiso is referenced twice, each time as something that is unfinished; an unfinished phrase, or an unfinished story. San Francisco, he seems to be saying, had all of this potential, and like Dante's vision of heaven, it could conform to everyone's personal vision of a perfect city. Yet its potential went unrealized.
Now with the passing of one of the components that made it such a wonderful city, perhaps Ferlinghetti is one of the Italians "still alive on the benches/watch[ing] it all with their hats on". They seem to be waiting for the realization of their Paradiso with the full knowledge that it won't ever come.
The poem leaves us with a dark image of a "black boat without sails," something potentially beautiful, but incomplete and bare. The image of San Francisco moves from a city of dreams--a city of and with a future--to a city that was.
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