Inspiration for poem #3: stunted eucalypt saplings on a hillside near Kaleen, ACT. They look (I thought) like an Australian version of the trees in the Forest of Suicides in the 7th Circle of Hell, as described in Dante's Inferno
#3 Song from the Seventh Circle (after Dante, Inferno, Canto XIII)
Snap me; I will speak from the wound. Let my story leak out, honey-red, become sap crusting my cursed bark.
Beautiful. That where we snap we sing from: such a wonderful definition of poetry (in action, and with your life given for it). Love this. Simple as the universe.
Thank you ! Have been offline all day, so lovely to see comments from Anne Sarah and Efi when I logged back on. The more I read that bit of the Inferno the more I am struck by the psychological layers in Dante's imagined landscape. How horrifying that it is only injury that frees the cursed trees to speak (in Dante's version it is actual blood that flows out, along with the released voice of the tortured soul). Horrifying but such a resonant idea...
'cursed bark' love that! Makes me shiver.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful. That where we snap we sing from: such a wonderful definition of poetry (in action, and with your life given for it). Love this. Simple as the universe.
ReplyDeleteThank you ! Have been offline all day, so lovely to see comments from Anne Sarah and Efi when I logged back on. The more I read that bit of the Inferno the more I am struck by the psychological layers in Dante's imagined landscape. How horrifying that it is only injury that frees the cursed trees to speak (in Dante's version it is actual blood that flows out, along with the released voice of the tortured soul). Horrifying but such a resonant idea...
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