from Dante Études, Book One: We Will Endeavor

written by


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[De Vulgari Eloquentia, I,I]

  “We will endeavor,
the word aiding us from Heaven,
  to be of service
to the vernacular speech”

  —from “Heaven” these

“draughts of the sweetest  honey-milk”,

  si dolcemente

from the language we first heard

  endearments   whisperings

  infant song and revery

a world we wanted  to go out into,

  to come to ourselves  into,

  organizations in the sound of them
  verging upon meaning,
  upon “Heaven”,
  hermetic talk
  into which my range of understandings
  was to grow  for love of it

  portents

  and adults expounding
  controversial doctrines, personal
  science fictions and
  rules of order,

but our own

“is that which we acquire without
any rule”  for love of it

  “imitating our nurses”

© Robert Duncan