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    • May 2013

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                                      when I beheld a fire
win out against a hemisphere of shadows.
                           —Inferno, Dante (tr. by Allen Mandelbaum)

If I could hold a fire against

a hemisphere of shadows, hold it

close, not so that damage

finds my hands, but so fire scatters

galvanizing strands, my pupils

responsive to the flames’ unbridled

tutelage as they tell me

nothing but these little jumps

out of your definitions, small

or large or leaping, sinking, slumped...

If I could hold a fire against

that latticework of shadows, standing

close to flames pivoting without

being singed or riveted or convinced

it is the only spirit, like a god,

making me something nailed to wood

then keep my head, then coolly draw

some backbone from that dazzle.

Source: Poetry (November 2012).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the November 2012 issue of Poetry magazine

• GTA: San Andreas (or, “Grove Street, bitch!”)
  by Jacob Saenz
• The Hurt Sonnet
  by Casey Thayer
• Letter to the Editor
  by Brendan Berls

• November 2012 Table of Contents
• Subscribe to Poetry magazine
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More about this poem

Biography

Lisa Williams is the author of Woman Reading to the Sea (W.W. Norton, 2008), winner of the 2007 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and The Hammered Dulcimer (Utah State University, 1998). She has poems forthcoming in Best American Erotic Poems (Scribner, 2008).

Continue reading this biography

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Poems by Lisa Williams

• Road
• Stemming  from Stevens

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Living, The Mind, Religion, The Spiritual

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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