Focus first on the black trunks, then the snow
that beats the ripples, then the wind-whipped flag,
the high school’s streaked cement and darkened glass,
like the building I would have trudged up to
twenty-five winters past. He tugs to move,
snuffling his first snow; everything’s a first
for him–hunched ducks on logs, the distant train.
In my ears, Albinoni’s oboes step
lightly, unruffled by the imminent
coda, and take the repeat serenely,
even though poor old Tomasso’s been dead
(of diabetes) more than two hundred
sodden Venetian winters. The coda comes,
the dog pulls me homeward, and where we’d stood,
the patient snow melts back into the waves.

Here is a poem from Dante’s Vita Nuova (xix, 31-36). I originally translated it for my book-in-progress that I’m calling Ethics from Fiction: Philosophy and Literature in Dante and Modern Times. I recently deleted this particular poem from the manuscript because I decided it was a digression. I don’t actually like it all that much, and I’m not sure that Dante did, either. Ever since Mark Musa’s Dante’s Vita Nuova: A Translation and an Essay (Bloomington, 1973), some have interpreted the Vita Nuova as Dante’s self-critique. His main problem is that he doesn’t know the object of his love poems, Beatrice, so his poems are self-indulgent. Here he uses the theme of the “Lady Passes” to praise a woman who is a distant figure him:

My lady is desired in highest heaven

And I want you to discern her virtue too.

If you’d seem a noble lady, I say: Go,

Walk with her as she passes through the streets,

For into villainous hearts Love drives ice,

And all thoughts freeze until they perish;

And anyone who dares remain and watch

Must become a noble thing, or else he dies.

It is better in Italian–click below.

Continue reading →

To bleg is to beg on your blog, your blog.
A blog made of movies: a vlog.
To twitter’s to text folks your latest post;
A flog is a blog by a corporate ghost.
A blath is on math; a blawg covers law;
A troll will pounce on your teeniest flaw.
An attorney whose mind is a fog
Should post his bleg on a blawg web log.
To clog a blog, you jam it with spam:
Just ping that thing a link to your scam.
The blogosphere, it’s got it all:
Rolls and blolls and folderol.
Post anything on yours–it’s fine;
Just don’t forget to link to mine.
Quotes and lies, it all is free;
Just don’t forget to link to me.

(If you think I made any of this up, click here.)

Oh, come with me and be my love,
For Saturday night–that’s enough.
Next week, I’ve got a paper due,
A service gig, an interview too.
“Come with me”: remember, from our course?
(Also a pun, which I’d better not force.)
Yes, I deleted “live”–but you can stay
‘Til ten. Then I’ll work on my résumé.
Slippers and buckles of the finest gold:
One day you’ll have those, and someone to hold.
But I’m by myself now; the market’s tight;
For now, I’ve got to focus, network, fight.
Wait ’til we’re forty, and then maybe
You can be my love and live with me.

[For ease of reference, here’s the Marlowe original and previous replies by Walter Ralegh, C. Day Lewis, William Carlos Williams, and Odgen Nash.]

America, you Jerusalem reborn!
No profligate, old-world, ruined people, you.
Behold: peace. You’re principle without pain and dishonor.
Dishonor and pain without principle: your peace.
Behold, you people: ruined world!
Old, profligate. No reborn Jerusalem you, America.

*Distantly inspired by Yehuda Alharizi’s “Palindrome for a Patron” [12th or 13th century] as translated by Peter Cole and cited by Harold Bloom in the June 28 New York Review of Books.