By HONOR MOORE
To bind at last
the loose miscellany
a first love left
and shattered.
That summer
in Florence alone
she stepped
into the Bargello,
room of Donatello, of saints
given shape.
This time to speak
not fear language
but it was raining and
from her attention
the 4 o’clock instructor
vanished.
Thunder,
a miniature apocalypse
torrential across
the castle window,
she takes up
an essay about
the great Irish poet.
Again the girl
of twenty
now in Cambridge,
in her hands
a turquoise book
about that poet,
her brain wrestling
toward a still point, what
to be faithful to.
A language
in fragments,
at her ear, the present
storm binding her
back to what it is
that breaks then
frees the mind.
Honor Moore is the author of three collections of poetry—Red Shoes, Darling, and Memoir—with a fourth collection forthcoming. Her most recent books are the memoir The Bishop’s Daughter and Poems from the Women’s Movement, which she edited for the Library of America.
