Without Lifting A Finger

Was just thinking about the cover of Eugenio Montale's The Storm & Other Poems (translated by Charles Wright). The cover has an illustration by Gustave Dore: an illustration he did for Dante's Inferno . * Paul Gustave Doré ( French:  [pɔl ɡystav dɔʁe] ; January 6, 1832 – January 23, 1883) was a French artist, engraver , illustrator and sculptor . Doré worked primarily with wood engraving . Biography Doré was born in Strasbourg and his first illustrated story was published at the age of fifteen. His talent was evident even earlier, however. At age five he had been a prodigy troublemaker, playing pranks that were mature beyond his years. Seven years later, he began carving in cement. Subsequently, as a young man, he began work as a literary illustrator in Paris, winning commissions to depict scenes from books by Rabelais , Balzac , Milton and Dante . In 1853, Doré was asked to illustrate the works of Lord Byron . [ 1 ] This commission was followed by additio...

Both of these poems are from The Storm & Other Poems (my copy is a slick little book: black and white cover design from Gustave Dore's illustrations to Dante's Inferno ). ON THE GREVE Now a glance no longer sustains me as once it did, when you would lean out at my whistle and I could hardly see you. A boulder, a deep, splayed furrow, the black flight of a swallow, a lid clamped on the cauldron of the world . . . Bread to me is that velvet bud which opens out to a mandolin's glissando, water your rustle flowing; your deep, deep breath is wine. SYRIA The ancients said that poetry is a stairway to God. Maybe it isn't so if you read me. But I knew it the day that I found the voice for you again, loosed in a flock of clouds and goats bursting out of a ravine to browse the slaver of thorn and bulrush; the lean faces of the moon and sun became one face, the car was broken down and an arrow of blood on a boulder pointed the way to Aleppo. [...