This poem is taken from PN Review 250, Volume 46 Number 2, November - December 2019.
Bliss: 29 & 30
A Draft of Cantos 29 and 30
29.
Latona’s shining children, at that certain time
the zenith hangs them beneath the scales and the ram,
one on each side of the girdling horizon, seem
to tremble in a perfect equilibrium
till the moment passes and they change hemispheres;
for just so long, alight with a smile, Beatrice stares
at the white point which had entirely mastered me.
‘I answer without asking,’ she then said, ‘for I see
what you wish to hear in the star where every
place and age is anchored; in that perpetuity,
outside of the mercy that is time, past all
comprehension and containment, the eternal
Love unfurls itself in a hundred billion loves…
not moved by self-interest, but so those lives
might flash His splendour back to Him when they say I.
Before light feet whirred on this sea, He didn’t lie
...
Latona’s shining children, at that certain time
the zenith hangs them beneath the scales and the ram,
one on each side of the girdling horizon, seem
to tremble in a perfect equilibrium
till the moment passes and they change hemispheres;
for just so long, alight with a smile, Beatrice stares
at the white point which had entirely mastered me.
‘I answer without asking,’ she then said, ‘for I see
what you wish to hear in the star where every
place and age is anchored; in that perpetuity,
outside of the mercy that is time, past all
comprehension and containment, the eternal
Love unfurls itself in a hundred billion loves…
not moved by self-interest, but so those lives
might flash His splendour back to Him when they say I.
Before light feet whirred on this sea, He didn’t lie
...
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