Day was fading. Patterns of clay

terracotta and stone merged with a mud-laced

Arno. They say

Dante's grave should rest in this place

engraved in the marble of a church

among frozen faces

that stitched together words, oil paint, rebirth.

Exiled by a family and papal command,

he threaded his way across Italian earth,

entwined mountains, lakes, stanzas,

underworlds into an interwoven net

of man's existence. A Renaissance can

change the patterns of a sunset,

the color of thread, the very tapestry

of humanity. It will set

the geometric string of history.

Let one man sew together cantos of three

lines, colored rhymes. Let me

enter its deep and wild weave.