For my money Dante is about as great as you can get.

               —Flannery O’Connor, Letter to Elizabeth Hester, November 10, 1955

 

Tell me, poet, pilgrim, friend

how you managed to make a world.

Your lines a sturdy scaffold we climb

to heaven, gawking at the sinners we find

along your highway out of hell. You own

a genius for evil, as well as good,

but it’s the former that haunts me, a man

who eats his child a thing I could

not forget if I tried, and I don’t.

It’s part of me now, like last night’s corn-

bread I ate for supper. Deep under the skin

you and I are kin,

conjuring words, eager to atone

for the pity of being blood and bone.