agate density

GREEN HILL

Dante nearing the end of his poem

ambled around Ravenna

under cloudy skies.  He saw

the glinting tesserae in the high gloom

of San Vitale, Sant’ Apollinaris,

yet loved best

that older cryptic nest

Galla Placidia (Empress

for a day, exile & refugee)

had plaited long before –

with panel of Jesus-Nazir

styled as Arcadian Orphée

clasping rustic David’s staff,

loafing on a green slope

shared with sleepy sheep.

He loitered, gazing at the roof-

beams, lit with swirly-interlocking

whorls of 8-point stars

surrounding one small cross

like neon phosphorus – marking

their zones of cosmic midnight blue.

The mausoleum held

no body.  The rough shell

hid its agate density from view.

Primitive angel glyphs in caves

across the planet glimmer,

lurking, waiting for her

aria of plummet-stone, through waves

                 *

of spacetime, spiraling in Dante’s ear.

Singing, bringing in sheaves

(while Ariadne weaves

her fleecy oarlocks round one salty tear).

So tesserae reform, like Gospel

beasts into one

M – a beak so aquiline

& sharp to tear the casket lid from Hell –

the shearing blade of sheep from wolf,

of infant innocence

from feral insolence,

scattering bread across a shark-tooth Gulf.

Ariadne lifts her penny whistle sign.

A chartered Paris yearns

toward heaven – burns

for shame... the Minotaur’s declension

stokes the flames, flares orange

for a time (4 times).

In the House of 4 Pines

wind-chimes supplicate one ange

d’or via strange door (subterranean).

The flute still rhymes.

The sunny shepherd climbs

a green hill toward his Galilean

Psyche-Mendelssohn.  Sibelius

ratchets his violin...

geese fly from Ravenn

into Estonian concord (a Finnish Russe).

6.1.17

engr. by Harold Sund (from Ravenna : a Study, by Edward Hutton)