What He Thought
…………. —an excerpt
. . . we sat and chatted, sat and chewed,
till, sensible it was our last
big chance to be poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked
………………………………….. “What’s poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables and
marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or
the statue there?” Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn’t have to think—“The truth
is both, it’s both,” I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was the easiest to say. What followed
taught me something about difficulty,
for our underestimated host spoke out,
all of a sudden, with rising passion, and he said:
The statue represents Giordano Bruno,
brought to be burned in the public square
because of his offense against
authority, which is to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government, but rather is
poured in waves through all things. All things
move. “If God is not the soul itself, He is
The soul of the soul of the world.” Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him
forth to die, they feared he might
incite the crowd (the man was famous
for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask, in which
he could not speak. That’s
how they burned him. That is how
he died: without a word, in front
of everyone.
………………. And poetry—
………………………………….. (we’d all
put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on
softly)—
……………………… poetry is what
he thought, but did not say.
by Heather McHugh
from Poetry 180
Random House 2003