Patricia Nelson
Glaucus
—After Dante: Paradiso
I have eaten like an herb
this strange language of light
and I have seen others change.
I who am arrogant and vain
have begun to speak simply,
to think in small questions.
I am narrow, my shoulder bent toward one
whose eyes move like the sea, a blue so wild
it turns my eyes and makes them smaller.
I am Glaucus near his fish that woke and walked.
He ate the grass beneath them, then went
like an open violet into the color of the sea.
The damp, blank bowl of his forehead
followed silver creatures gliding in the tide.
His dream brightened with its distance from land.
How he loved what he didn’t understand,
followed all the foreign, shining shapes.
with his porous wants, his potions and commands.
I wear the sad and iron body of his love,
swaying in its weight, its fervor,
its lengthening, glowing ride.
