This is not Dante. 
This is a photograph of Dante. 
This is a film showing an actor who pretends to be Dante. 

It’s an awesome thing, when fate takes you at your word 
at eighteen or twenty. If Dreams weren’t greater than Action. . . 
Happiness on this earth! One has to be pretty vulgar 

I stood by the dark barn and called 
and called to her by name, 
into the labyrinth of stalls 

My mother, who opened my eyes, who 
brought me into the terrible world, 
was guilty. Her look apologized: 

Up the hill the motorcycle climbs, its sound
near now, entering the dream
and the girl’s hair flares

      It is not consumption of meat,
the great food-chain waste, that makes one ugly.
      Watching apes pelt enemies with dung

I.
I will tell you. Maybe 
You’re leaning in the open 
Doorway of some Irish bar, 

The lighthouse as an image
of loneliness has its limits.

For as we stand on the shore

They won’t come to you. These nights, you could sit for a year
on the dock behind Arthur’s Gift Shop and General Store
before you’d spot with your flashlight

Where each drop of blood
struck: lips in the dirt.
And on my chest as I