of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Sestina: Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni (translation)"
I'm in no way ready for a sestina; however, I do enjoy this poem.
I want to riff off of one stanza: "She is more bright than is a precious stone; / The wound she gives may not be healed with grass: / I therefore have fled far o'er plains and hills / For refuge from so dangerous a lady; / But from her sunshine nothing can give shade,-- / Not any hill, nor wall, nor summer-green."
From my desk I try to undo all of the noise in a line. In a line your name fumbles,
trips over the others. Except that morning in Italy when I got brave enough to walk
down the city without you, when a woman opened her palms to me. Though I heard her
very little, the gentle tilt of the gesture said she knew about this world, this world
without so many of its pitiful nights spent alone. On her back, a small boy. His hair
looked messy as cobblestone. She smiled. The rest of her left me. She left me open
to a man walking with his cane and cardigan, to a young girl braiding her hair
in the sun, to an old couple loving an afternoon without rain. From my desk I undo the noise.
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