Robert Duncan

from Dante Études, Book One: We Will Endeavor

De Vulgari Eloquentia, I, I
 
                           “We will endeavor,
the word aiding us from Heaven,
   to be of service
to the vernacular speech”
 
      —from “Heaven” these
 
“draughts of the sweetest   honey-milk”,
 
      si dolcemente
 
from the language we first heard
 
   endearments    whisperings
 
               infant song and revery
 
a world we wanted    to go out into,
 
    to come to ourselves     into,
 
    organizations in the sound of them
    verging upon meaning,
                                       upon “Heaven”,
    hermetic talk
    into which my range of understandings
    was to grow    for love of it
 
             portents
 
    and adults expounding
        controversial doctrines, personal
        science fictions and
                           rules of order,
 
but our own
 
“is that which we acquire without
any rule”    for love of it
 
                “imitating our nurses”
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