MEDITATION ON A LINE FROM HAFIZ

by Jane Satterfield

An afternoon given to walks

along the Arno, to shaded medieval alleys
where maps said we’d find the poet’s home,

one regret

& we found, instead,

walls scaffolded, the Casa di Dante
wrapped in painter’s plastic.
No tours the whole
of that fevered season.
Dear world,

we found, instead,
the tiny church
where Dante first
saw his Beatrice;
the pocked walls
from when the Arno
escaped its banks, and rising,
left its visible mark—

I am determined not to have

the light of searing conviction—

when I am lying on my deathbed

drifting back to the ghostly square

where one black-robed ‘hound of God’
called forth a corps of moral spies
for public denunciation and ordeal

is that

under the dark palm

of the Tuscan sun

in the flutter of Pace flags—

I did not kiss you enough.

Notre Dame Review No. 28, Vol. 1, Summer 2009.