This Same Circle
Lasciate
ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.
(All hope abandon, ye who enter in.)
~Dante's Divine Comedy, Canto III, line 9.
I had
succeeded in ridding my dreams
of you, found a new happiness like
prescription medicine.
I bought a black sweater you had
never seen, and I who was your tainted
year's pastel toy wore it every day,
measured myself under other hands
as summer fell and I forgot.
One word, one
glimpse, and you
are persistent back inside my sleep,
real and solid, smelling of Scotch
and harsh tobacco. You are despair.
In woven three instants I am under
neath you, around you, we are
making love, we are fucking, we are
something
around the earth's sweet painful curve
straight on till darkness.