Poems by John Pilkey |
Eugene Delacroix. The Barque of Dante (1822) Let Dante wander through the land of shade and then the realm of light for alteration. It's better, I suppose, than those who stayed behind in dismal holes of un-creation. The poet Virgil condescends to guide him to places where existence barely lingers; he sometimes points ahead and sometimes hides him to peep through networks of his timid fingers. The better Beatrice assumes the chore of showing what results from loss of sin by premature ascending through the door where disembodied saints have all got in. But that sly voyage depends on presupposing that "in" outranks in glory future "it" and disembodied souls in present prosing prefer to contemplate and merely sit. Whereas I read in Revelation Six that martyrs sit complaining to the Lord as though they'd rather materialize and mix it up with persecutors of the Word. To float away and contemplate is good but not so good as compassing a body, a masterpiece beyond the reach of food, beyond the weak, the mortal and the shoddy. Immortal life means visible performance like actors on a stage or modern dance assembled at foundation or disturbance where dying faces can't resist a glance. John Davis Pilkey |
A Preference |
