Dante in Ravenna
by Lucy Beckett
She who has been my love of all the world,
dying long ago, left me alone to learn
out of my loss of her something of God.
I had no other teacher of the heart
but books; Augustine, Virgil, Bernard drew
maps for my journey from a nowhere place
of darkness to the patient light of truth.
And now, an old man in these foggy streets
of a flat city steep as purgatory,
I stumble towards the gold of San Vitale,
towards the candlelight, the prophets, marble
waves of the sea transfixed, mosaic walls
of green, white, scarlet, men alone with God,
Melchisedech and Abel, in their hands
offerings of the earth, and in the priest’s
bread become God, the wine we never shared
become his blood for us, the life we share.
A matter of belief the gift of her
has been always, who took my soul through death
in love for which you have only my word,
my many thousand words. As so do I.
Out in the Adriatic the waves move
grey with the slowness of the winter sea,
their chill to fetch me soon to her, to God.
No more to do but kneel on the cold floor,
watching the emperor who stayed away,
the God who came, holding us in his grace.
Lucy Beckett is British and was born in 1942. She was educated at Cambridge University and worked for thirty years as a schoolteacher (Latin, English, History). She has published eight books, including a collection of poems, a major study of Western writing read in a Christian context, and two novels. A third novel will be published by Ignatius Press in 2014. She is married, has four children and lives in rural Yorkshire.