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A mosaic high on a wall, flakes of fire, winged, alive, a snake of love, pictures of people vying, offering gifts to each other, cupped hands of pure light. Up there you can make brightness and darkness without shadows, but the radiant light that makes them shine so beautifully, clothes, colors, gives structure to the scene, that's God's. That woman, there, in the veil, God honored her flesh second, then nearer the true Son, inside her was the world's first light-filled dawn whose glory no living mind can even faintly shadow, no memory draw on paper, much less the genius praised for rhymes. |
An image of the Italian text from Visconti's 1840 edition |
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Notes: From V CXXX:290. See also B S1, 64, 117; MS V2; Valgrisi 64. Translation: Stortoni & Lillie 71. A thirteenth in a series to the Virgin, this time concentrating on a stylized picture in a church, perhaps a stained glass window? Key |
