After Dante

If you are out there, my beloved, my promised soul-mate,
write to me at 'Circle Eight, The Hypocrites' Close,'

just below the ring of burning sand. Write to me by bottle-mail
as all bridges are broken, collapsed under the weight of sinners

who go astray in this region. I am not resident but pilgrim,
seeking the infeasible among flatterers, charmers and deceivers.

They have grown roots in this rocky, rhetorical landscape.
We are all in a pickle of sweet compliments.

Mine is the brine of love-sickness which I can't cure or part with,
theirs is doubt's gunk. Write to 'six-six-six Lower Hell, Earth's Centre'

It is close to my heart, deep in my personal inferno.
I am tall, attractive, the laurel wearing type, and if you are slim,

blond and at least a couple of years younger, we are the match
that sets stars alight. I am already so head over heels,

hell could as well be situated in the pitch black
between Sirius and Gemini: as above so below.

Admittedly, I hang out at the low end. After all this is Boglia,
call it bedlam, a place as cosy as the devil's pockets.

If you are Beatrice you know, exaggeration is transient.
You have passed through this ditch long ago,
perhaps carved your phone number on the back of a stone.

 

Copyright © Valeria Melchioretto, 2006.

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Valeria Melchioretto is an artist and writer who has lived in London since 1992. In 2004 her pamphlet Podding Peas was published by Hearing Eye. She received the New Writing Ventures Award 2005 and in the same year was highly commended for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. Her first collection, Cloud Chamber, will appear from Salt Publishing in 2007.