POEM

from Dante Études, Book One: We Will Endeavor

by Robert Duncan

[De Vulgari Eloquentia, I,I]

                            “We will endeavor,
the word aiding us from Heaven,
    to be of service
to the vernacular speech”

        —from “Heaven” these

“draughts of the sweetest   honey-milk”,

       si dolcemente
from the language we first heard

    endearments    whisperings

                infant song and revery

a world we wanted    to go out into,

     to come to ourselves     into,

     organizations in the sound of them
     verging upon meaning,
                                        upon “Heaven”,
     hermetic talk
     into which my range of understandings
     was to grow    for love of it

              portents

     and adults expounding
         controversial doctrines, personal
         science fictions and
                            rules of order,

but our own

“is that which we acquire without
any rule”    for love of it

                 “imitating our nurses”

Though the name Robert Duncan is not well known outside the literary world, within that . . . MORE »

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