I

The rippling waters of the stream
are like a thought turning over and over, 
slipping out of grasp.

The sun is winking behind the white pine
as I lie on the bridge,
feeling its arch under my back,

watching the pattern of green leaves
against blue sky, a faint scrim of cloud,
and one soaring red-tailed hawk.


	II

Out of the corner of my eye
I see you standing on the bridge,
singing the way you only 
sing to yourself 
when you are happy.

You don’t like to be noticed
so I listen without seeming to.
May you go on singing
in my heart forever.
                        

	I
Seven hundred years ago, 
Dane died in exile in Ravenna 
and was buried there.

His native Florence 
refused his body, 
but two centuries later,
Florence wanted him back. 

The Pope approved the transfer,
but the monks in Ravenna 
returned an empty coffin 
to Florence’s new memorial. 

They had removed the poet’s bones
from his tomb for safekeeping
and interred them in the basilica wall 

where they lay forgotten
for three hundred years,
until a renovation revealed them,

and they were buried 
in a mausoleum near the church
on a side street so narrow 
it is easy to miss.

Forty years ago we visited Ravenna
and found Dante’s tomb,
the worn white marble
softened by lichens,
the inscription so weathered 
it was hard to read.

How modest it seemed
after a day of monuments
already ancient in Dante’s time,
Justinian’s mosaics in blue and gold 
and the tomb of Gallia Placida
that inspired Purgatorio and Paradiso.

Once the western outpost 
of a great empire, today’s
Ravenna is a backwater, 
surrounded by marshes
dotted with oil wells.

	II
One hundred years ago,
after the Great War, 
an Italian immigrant to Argentina

resolved to build Dante
a worthy monument
in his new country
on the other side of the world,

a building emerging
from the depths of the earth
reaching to the heavens,

in every detail and at every level
an embodiment 
of Dante’s great poem,

elaborate and fantastical
a celebration of the imaginary
over the mundane,

realized as a skyscraper
named for himself,
the Palacio Barolo.

Twenty-two floors representing
twenty-two stanzas
sit on a foundation
scaled to the golden ratio.

The visitor begins in hell,
progresses to purgatory,
and ascends to heaven.

The lobby, crowned
with Latin inscriptions
and statues of serpents, 
dragons, and condors,

radiates from a central dome
into nine vaulted archways,
the nine circles of hell,
lit by red lights
set in metal flowers.

Geometric patterns 
representing alchemist’s fire 
and Masonic symbols 
decorate floors, ceilings,
and elevator walls
in red, white, and green tiles,
the colors of the Italian flag.

The higher levels,
corresponding to heaven,
begin at an observation deck
overlooking the sprawl
of Buenos Aires,

crowned by a lighthouse
at the highest point
of one hundred meters,
like the Divine Comedy’s
one hundred Cantos,
topped by a statue of Dante
ascending to heaven.

Architect Pilanti intended
the light from the tower
of the Palacio Barolo
to cross the light 
from the Palacio Salvo,
his sister building across
the Rio de la Plata
in Montevideo,

the two beams mingling
like the heavenly union 
of Dante and Beatrice,
welcoming visitors
to the great estuary
like the Pillars of Hercules
to the Mediterranean.

By a miscalculation
of the earth’s curvature,
the beams never crossed,
and the cupola, intended
for Dante’s remains,
remains empty.