Mercy

They make jars of honey that hold the light— the monks who live on the hill in Florence.

I am on the train, writing. What would Dante make of this— this man with his white light and gas mask digging a hole inside an already deep hole? Is there time enough to tell it before my stop? Down in the crypt the monks sang and we sat on the cool unilluminated stone, listening.

The radiance of the living is no resplendence of the rose, just the exile’s unmetered silence. Dante describes it as hunger, insatiable. There is a reason the open eye cannot help but consume light. God can be so easy— as easy as looking. Even eating requires more muscle, more swallow.

We climbed the stairs into sunlight, bought a jar of honey. In the city, you dipped your finger in it and I sucked the sweetness off, tasting yellow where there was none.

Dante never returned to Florence, the Paradiso not enough to fashion him a second fleece, language being a lesser sheath than the quality of light on the bell towers.

In the tunnel—a distant light—my stop. What is Hell? What is Paradise? I like it better in the middle with the living, where the birds make a scene in the Piazza, where Dante—poor Dante— still sleeps wrapped in Ravenna’s octagonal rooms of lapis.

And the monks threw open the windows, honey-colored light on the grotto floors.

Time to climb the stair into a day so bright with presence it makes my eyes ache.

God, you clothed me in this flesh, now you strip it off.