from Dante
Al poco giorno
e al gran cerchio d’ombra
1.
In the brief
day of masks
When the color
leaves
And the grass
is white
In the day that
comes
To the white
bleached hills
My desire is
lost.
In the scalded
hills lost
In the stone
woman masked
In the white
hills
Fixed in the
dying leaves
Left but how
hard is stone when the soft shade comes
To her that is
masked, how white?
When the shade
softens the white
And covers in
green the desire lost
In the flowers
coming
In the orchards
unmasking
In the fields
and leaves
Releasing the
white hills
Turning green
the new hills
Taking breached
the will of bleached white
Finding the
stone self in leaves
Shielding the
stone not lost
For its beauty
unmasked
Made clear in a
verdant coming
As a person
comes clear in leaving
As the stars of
grass come
Calm to the
plains not lost
Come finding
green hills
Where the
person is not white
And the unlight
of I is unmasked
As leaves from
the grass of hills
Come green come
unbleached
As desire
comes, found, and unmasked
As I come
between
2.
In the brief bereft
of eyes
of what
ambition imparts with time
In her eyes
periodic departures and the cold
brought back
from places she’s not known
the address
that’s not a home
the country
where desire persists
In hillocks
mountains persist
In the bleached
sand snow and ice
call the hunted
home
Ecology
announces the death of time
erases the
burden of being Unknown
the fear of
coming in from the cold
the rattling of
the harrow persists
as shoulders
bump against the known
A satyr he
should fear Demeter’s eyes
to be unmanned
before his time
in the place he
once called home
Not Love but
Love’s mother draws us home
all lifted to
her lips but the cold
of stone white
in this green time
By persistence
will she be known
with knowledge
driven home
splendour
condensed in her eyes
There is a
winter’s distant cold
unremembered
nights persist
against the
odds of perfect time
The odour of
time clouds our eyes
but vision
persists in what we know
coming home to
the fondling cold
3.
In underpants,
the lost can see
what will gives
from hours
In her vision –
small and interrupted leavings and the cold—the fucking cold
returned from
anonymity
those numbers
aren’t on her gate
in this place
where want lasts
In the small
hills height remains
in the white
sediment and snow, some ice.
It calls to the
chased
the way systems
shout ‘hey, time’s up’
and wipe out
the weight of being one
and the fear of
being welcomed
The way spring
returns from a thaw
as noisy as
hell, never ceasing
shoulders
jostling against its certainty
That old goat
should fear Spring
She’ll unman
him soon enough
in that place
he once called home
At first, it’s
as if Love’s mother sketches the houses
and lifts the
pencil (to her mouth)
And it is,
everything lifted to her mouth, except winter,
not Love but
Love’s mother that holds us
leafing,
blooming, selfing
undone in her
eyes, light’s mechanical misfortune
She will be
known, by all the science of the schools
standing in the
hollow of a spoon
dancing a
concave of warming
There is a
winter we forget
its night
dissolved in this solution
as if time were
not a problem
and the little
smile in the corner of her mouth
her turning
back, were of the essence
Let’s not talk
about time or the insubstantial
qualities of
what it moves around in
Let’s just
close the door behind us when we leave
Dante’s Rime Petrose are the underbelly of his beatified distortion of desire. Starting from Ted's literal translation of Dante's quartet of petrified rimes, we have tried to pull this desire slant, into repetition, into shifting patterns of diffusion and accumulation where dejection can flourish, where the gendered subject (masked) and the green hill can regather. This sestina is the first of the four canzoni.
Christine Stewart works in the English and Film Studies Department at the University of Alberta. She studies poetics, and is a founding member of the Writing Revolution in Place Research Collective. Recent publications: “Propositions from Under Mill Creek Bridge,” in Sustaining the West. Wilfred Laurier, “On Treaty Six from Under Mill Creek Bridge” in Toward. Some. Air. Banff Centre Press, “This—from Treaty Six” in Dusie and The Odes, Nomados Press.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
