This afternoon
Dante will be expelled
by Pierre Joris
This afternoon Dante
will be ex-
pelled from Florence –
a good thing as how could he
have written so well
on the far-away imaginary ex-
ile of the comically divine
realms had he not known
what it meant to walk
over a cold January day’s
ground frost, clod-
breaking, heart beating,
from one city to another
– to come to
this: that exile
is but the next step you take
the unknown there
where your foot comes
down
next, in
heaven or on earth
exile is when you can still
lift a foot,
exile is
when you are not
yet dead.
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