Lamenti by George Elliott Clarke (pace Franco Costabile) My Dove! Jesus! Return, descend again, like incarnate manna, to remain with us— O! Dove— involuted in incense-swirling wind. You daub us with myrrh (befalling), drench us with tears perfume-besotted, waft—above us—ivory clouds pregnant with incense…. Dove, it ain’t possible, is it? That Love can be ingrained in air just as apple-blossom tinctures permeate a May breeze or flames inextinguishable, deathless, house impregnable within a volcano, is, realistically, the fact of Faith. Yeah, Time does climax—and relax into Fancy, as when I sleepily imagine I navigate a white sanctuary of sunlight. Then again, Pain rivets me— as much as does Beauty or Love…. Christ! Lookit! Thy nails don’t just spike my palms and ankles, but also my twinned eyes, turning prophecies irreparably bloody as if Thy Apostle John doubles as Jack the Ripper, eh? No? I recognize the Renaissance splendour— Michelangelo-imagined— of the divine Light rinsing calligraphic Poetry (scriptures, scrolls) in gold-wash, illuminated, enlightening. My Dove, Jesus! Return, become incarnated, reborn, in each of us, as Love, thus grafting upon us wings. [Cetraro (Italia) 25 mai mmxxv]
George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960. He was the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17). An English professor at the University of Toronto, Clarke has taught at Duke, McGill, UBC, and Harvard. He has received the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, Premiul Poesis (Romania), Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, and the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US). Basta!
