déjà vu

(with regards for Canto XV in Pinsky’s translation of Dante’s Inferno)

repetition is a quality of heaven

                        repetition is a quality of hell

We met a gang of spirits

    on the riverbank; blue and orange

fire behind. We eyed them

warily,

habitual beings

as the moon became new.

       They

       returned this to us,

long, one-eyed

staring, hand steady,

through a needle.

Strange days,

a knowledge problem

a problem of encounter.

   How some nerve-rigged

       comparison process

shivers the cards

       to the surface

        throwing down higher than average odds,

picking up pairs--

What do they want?

Memory, a fragile badge,

like desire, replaces

         itself with itself--

the lens                       twisting twisting

until   one collars me

and

makes me look

at his baked face,

and I see my teacher and ask,

       “Are you here?”

-Belle Gironda

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