I Dreamt I Was Dante (Revised)

Henry Holiday - Dante and Beatrice (Google Art Project)

by Brett Rutherford 

I dream in mezzanotte silver-gray,
donning the robes of aging Alighieri,
sandalled and aching with brittle legs,
heeding the call of Thanatos —
waking or sleeping? —
I do not know! I feel the dew
upon my ankles, but these feet are numb,
my ankles bony knobs, my toes
the neglected bird-claws of an exile.

The years have browned and scourged
my limbs. An umber moon,
senile amid the drooling clouds,
tilts earthward and winks at me,
changeless and blistering.
the knowing eye of eternity, 

Amid a cypress grove, whose rippled leaves
cat-fur the rigid columns of the sky,
the tree-trunks are deeply furrowed
with weeping moss, and blue drear tears,
unbearable in daylight, collect. How cool
they are, how wise, reflecting in leaf-cups
each one the tiny faces of moon and Venus
(so must we mortals, in mirror'd shields
look on the Gorgon face of Love!) 

Among the trees, close-packed, a maze
made from slab-walls of quarry stone —
square blocks of some god’s
abandoned temple? — an idle Pharaoh’s
never-completed pyramid? —
now an unpeopled catacomb roofed by a vault
of stars! The maze invites my errant feet
to tread its ever-regressive avenues.

You need not tell me what is there.
No carving, no placard
    with a pointing arrow
has been prepared for me,
yet I already know the place
my demon-guided steps will take me. 

At the far heart of this stone-cypress maze,
in a niche cut out of purest marble,
on a pediment of onyx, Beatrice waits.
She is already dead, and I may die
before I ever find her resting place.
There may be stairs beneath it,
     too many to count.

That is the journey, and there is no Virgil,
and although I have read him, his silver lines
fade now to dust motes in my memory.

Beatrice! No matter how long, how fast
I walk, I am no nearer you
than that first sight, when you,
thirteen, scorned to return my gaze.

 --November 16, 2018
Revised and expanded June 22, 2026

The Warning

I think the animals will come and live among us,
their habitats ruined, their forests burned, their seas
afloat with the litter-tide of our abominations.
It comes in small ways, foretold in dreams:
       the snake I saw
amid the lettuce leaves: how does one eat
around its coiled length without disturbing it?
Is it a venomous one? — Will it take an egg
if I poise it at one end of the salad bowl,
and, swallowing it, slide off and ignore me?

Why, when I open my wardrobe door
do two fawns stagger-stumble from it,
their deer-horse voices calling, “Hide us!”?

Why do I awaken, just half the bed my own,
the other half fur-snuggle full of breathing:
a great gray wolf, red-eyed and drooling?
“No need to worry,” his bass voice assures me,
tongue lapping my hand ‘twixt double dog fangs.
“As long as I’m here, the others will spare you.”

“Others?” I ask. I sit up in bed and find
amid my clutter of chairs and Chinese, Egyptian
tchotchkes, blocking the view of Renaissance
boy, the enigma-smiling Bronzino print,
a diorama of wild animals on the move: bear cubs,
an eagle and a fox in tug-of-war fight
over a leftover steak from the refrigerator,

dark-mask raccoon faces, opossums peeping
from under the uplifted carpet’s corner,
a raven (not stuffed, a living raven!) a-perch
my bust of Hermes. My foot, in search of slipper,
startles a whippoorwill that hoots at me.
A badger rejoins its den beneath my floorboards.

I am not their food and they are not mine,
but somehow, they will have to be provided for.
They are here for the duration, as the water rises,
the tornadoes whirl, the fracked earth shivers.
It is hard to look into their eyes without shame.