Torch

when I beheld a fire win out against a hemisphere of shadows. —Inferno, Dante (tr. by Allen Mandelbaum) If I could hold a fire against a hemisphere of shadows, hold it close, not so that damage finds my hands, but so fire scatters galvanizing strands, my pupils responsive to the flames’ unbridled tutelage as they tell me nothing but these little jumps out of your definitions, small or large or leaping, sinking, slumped