ON FIRST READING DANTE'S PARADISO
I used to wonder: did he write this from a kind of goldenness
that welled up in him the way tears well up in others
and there I was in the collegiate sunshine reading gold.
to anyone else it would seem I was quiet there
with my bookstore copy of The Paradiso
in the Ciardi translation.
I felt it all melt around me and I was in an arbor of gold
and floating and there were divine suns everywhere
catching the woods on fire and beyond the perimeter
of our small school and the St. Louis sun made obeisance
to the several ones and then disappeared
and there was soaring
and music falling through several atmospheres
while we moved from star to star in the Immovable
the Only True Heart
and if anyone had come up to me in the student union
and asked, do you forget where you are when you read
after a dazed moment I would have answered: yes.
you cannot imagine how much.
mary angela douglas 27 november 2017
I used to wonder: did he write this from a kind of goldenness
that welled up in him the way tears well up in others
and there I was in the collegiate sunshine reading gold.
to anyone else it would seem I was quiet there
with my bookstore copy of The Paradiso
in the Ciardi translation.
I felt it all melt around me and I was in an arbor of gold
and floating and there were divine suns everywhere
catching the woods on fire and beyond the perimeter
of our small school and the St. Louis sun made obeisance
to the several ones and then disappeared
and there was soaring
and music falling through several atmospheres
while we moved from star to star in the Immovable
the Only True Heart
and if anyone had come up to me in the student union
and asked, do you forget where you are when you read
after a dazed moment I would have answered: yes.
you cannot imagine how much.
mary angela douglas 27 november 2017
