Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare - Dante, Canto II, Inferno

Beatrice, your sorrow is like the blue light
Before sunset. You are as wounded now
As I was leaving your veranda of farewell.

You envy their worldliness, the nights they
Have lived in distant provinces of the empire,
Drinking with the natives by the sea.

But who is to say our provincial childhoods
Were less beautiful, yours practicing the klavier
Scales, and mine in the butterfly's shade?

This homesickness for the other, where
Does it begin? And why do we value
The familiar comfort of a quite room

So little? What answer to your question
What would have been the content
Of our fates hadn't the path forked?

We say to ourselves this stranger will
Lead us back to paradise that we have lost.
We say tomorrow there will be another

Fragrant night at the end of this night
Of lovemaking. We say few more cities are
Required to grow into our strange skins.

We say we will chose wisely next, and
Will try to love that lover a little more.
All the while forgetting too much of where

The heart had been as it leaps over the chasm
That is every morning. It is morning again.
So farewell till we meet by Charon's boat

Carrying for scuffed coins our battered hearts.


My Poems