DANTE&ANDREW: MASTER&PUPIL & WILLIAM.

 

At 6 am, on Easter Saturday morning, 2013, Dante and Andrew awaken together in the choir-

stalls of St Paul's outside-the-walls. For, 'the eternal pilgrim', proclaiming the word "April" in

prayer, before Our Lady, in Paradise, the night before, in Canto XCIV of the new 'Commedia',

a new, immortal protagonist arrives from behind the tabernacle. The two poets, are joined by William Shakespeare, the "April Man", forever associated with St George's Day, as events continue to move towards the month of April, beginning on Easter Monday. In Canto I, a tired and vanquished Dante, prepares his pupil, the greyhound, for the arrival of the Globe.

 

Split, then, ruptured and closed was that mass-

Iness of a fretless unPandemonium, liber

'Commedia Divina', the alabaster of that altar,

 

As beautiful as the tremulous delicacy of the

Alabaster of the Portinari. Final, then, was en-

Thralled and inreeled within the creamery highing

 

Paradise, suborned, indoctrinated, -and good Dante,

Run to some peace, that sung charm, was full

Wound up.    If time had passed, if shadows had

 

Appeared and lengthened, I know not, but if the

Time that merges between vespers and compline,

A cena of content, then, I would imagine that

 

Between music lost and the soft recitation yet

To come, -time had come and gone, and the high-

Ing turret of face content, that enormous edifice

 

Of bell tower, where in secreto, the tiny chapel

Of worship, would held the dropping spirits, of,

Day-wearied monks, who would air, day's final,

 

Final orsison, that Paradise would melt the

Purgatory of the middling journey that yet

Me remained, and Dante, came before me, and he let

 

Drop some of those desecrated pages, on the

Chapel floor, their fires snuffed and dimmed in

The light of their decay, -discarded sheaths

 

Of melodious canto music. And, ended, then, the

First Christ initated journey of 'The Christ Colloquy',

Jewelling encrustation of the logos, and pair, to,

 

'The Divine Comedy', of medium aevum. Had,

Not to the detriment of his re-won happiness,

Though, face panzered, Dante's once prolix 

 

Assignations of celebrated eloquence, suffocate

To a fresh new mute of tryanny, final ended,

Then, those copious tears fluting high, and terror,

 

Terrible distress for signalled portent of termination

As Dante Alighieri, encased within the

Hearth of heart, those marvellous leaves of his

 

Blaze and brilliance, which had trailed his name

So long as surging winking stars within the

Quieting ether, 'The Divine Comedy's' reburnt

 

And rescored pages wrought witness of simmering,

As the once glorious light, beat to a thin, thin pulse,

As had Virgil's 'Aeneid', before his, at the

 

Indoctrinating instruction of the Crucified.     So,

He, Dante, wrecked, complete disbursed within

The mellow of his, so harsh shattered leaves,

 

Turning within himself with the shielding aug-

Mentation of his covering cloak, and, flicking back,

The last of those lendings, leased his sunken face from

 

Centuries' tyranny of his art's pagination;

And, puncturing that semi-somnolent air, that

Split our latter refashioning identities, rare

 

Renaissance of my smote heart and animus,

Aired, within the cumulus of the wreathing

Shadows. And, the authority of that personage

 

Sublime, experienced, fired and tested, as a

Petrine walker of Inferno, Purgatorio and this

Paradiso, gelling disparate of those experiences,

 

Opened his white face, above the separation

Of San Paolo side-chapel altar, to speak half-away

Across its length: 'There is one who is arriving

 

At his own recommendation, of most transcendent

Genius, in labore dura et honesta, fortified his

Gift, and never, shirked, or watered away, by

 

Transparency or wine; who, when at table with

That dismal inexactitude, the school of the night,

Would rise quietly from that febrile talk, he

 

Who would not be debauched, and would arise,

A knight, saying that he was 'in pain'; I will full

Cede to his mastery, vanquished, the chilling

 

Remnants of my over-lauded art, from tissued

Of dolcestilnovisti, the ramparting tercet to

The fixing pentameter iambic, and, the purpling

 

Barge of of pomp which sits within the dramas,

Tragedies, comedies and poems of your old

Nativity of land's most prescient wit, the heady

 

Plumage of that Globe' Thames-side home,

Snuffed out, those lesser voices of character,

No dull and duteous Webster and Middleton,

 

Before his magnificence -- whole worlds, he

Struck out from his behemoth of choiring pen,

And whole translated compass of reference,

 

And of those orginals, origin, 'Chronicles'

Of Holinshed, lifted reams material historical

And sterile charcters, lifing, giving grammar

 

Of assent to a semi-rural nursing, before the

School room ceded to the purchase of New

Place; tangential, though, so divergent our

 

Supplicating gifted, no Beatrice, sole primed his

Many paramours of folding literature, but Heaven's April,

-Our- lissom loves, so apart, so apart too, our, Vocatio. As,

 

To some continuing faking of those glissom

Gossamer figures, such as ringing Ariel, of

Late shadows of Prospero of Milan, I would sue

 

Suffrage, but, drowned my book'. So, from

The supple wrought, of that homage tithed

Of introduction, and, before memory of the

 

"Sunny crown" sonnet could rearise within me,

I appraised, that passage of distance; so, shivering

Within the indentation of those closed bowers of 

 

Bliss, patrolling my shoulders, conscious ever

Of the holy mouths that had lost theuir song

Upon the holy barques, my, as yet only lightly

 

Weathered proven. And, sudden, I looked up to

The chapel roof, and then, I saw those faces

Dissolve to tissuelessness, those happy, about me,

 

Pliable, pleasing as saints, Publius Vergilius

Maro, and, Dante Alighieri, as melted into

The ether, and from out the quadrangle

 

Of my left eye, flashed a golden circuit

Of light, which lit my soul, with the glory great

Heaven, gloria dei. And, I saw, swift wheeling

 

Down to me, a cherubim or a seraphim,

And, I imagined it to be, as of Our Lady's angel

Guardian, -Gabriel. I looked for my con-

 

Tempories in time, my companions

Of voyage: 'Golden eye, and hawk of God',

The Angel of the Lord terminating breathed,

 

'Begins now, your golden project and

Truest voyage, for as Aquinas, Thomas

Said, that all that he had written

 

Was as straw compered to the love

Of God, so you knew

This Christmastide, that singular sensation

 

Of the continual lay holy and the blessed'.

And, before I could readmit sense to my

Over-washed sensibility, that Angel of the

 

Lord, anti-type to any Elizabethan Lord

Of Misrule, swam down to his silly scarecrow

Of debauch, as to my stout Cortez of ken,

 

And, kissed me on the lips, propelling soft,

A golden sweet of honey lozenge into my

Cleansed mouth, proof enough as to send

 

And would-be, luminous Augustine Manichee into ecstasy.

'The Christ Colloquy', Book II  Letteratura, Canto I, Grattan.

 

 

 

DANTE, WILLIAM AND THE NEW POET

 

       Face to face, with Dante, face to face, with Shakespeare,

         Face to face with Shakespeare, face to face with Dante,

Face to face, with them both, 'of the wood', the Canon's Holy Trinity,-

 

   'The Divine Comedy' to face the 'First Folio', and,

'The Christ Colloquy' turned, to face, the 'First Folio',

Our, three flooring, di-verbal di-national institute, to top,

 

Helen's towering Ilium, their encountering faces

Of delinetation, the completing, encircling circle of experience.

No word, the English uttered, but his unmistakable visage,

 

Known similar in the puncturing of Chandos,

Wordlessly, dress identifiable as of Elizabethan

Time, for the familar comport of his dress

 

And standing, -and, about him drawn loose,

A cloak of gaberdine, where lay, and armour

Upon his left side, an unshuflling signage

 

Drawn up and lodged, once, as I thought, by

That father, John, and then, resought ratified,

By successful theatre's son, last, the import

 

As, of a gentleman. Held, had Dante, close, those

Blazoning leaves of his vanquished 'Commedia',

Perhaps, temporarily, gone, for, all eternity,

 

-Virgil's- reject, wishing silence, to crumbling leaves,

Highest Rome's 'Aeneid', I, novus, cherishing,

'The Christ Colloquy', Shakespeare, held fast, the 'First Folio'.

'The Christ Colloquy', Book II Letteratura, Canto III, I-24, Grattan.  

 

​