Dove Sta Memoria (Where Memory Lives) Poem by Dennis Ryan

Wednesday August 1,2018; Thursday afternoon, July 28,2022

"Nothing matters but the quality of the affection—in the end—
that has carved the trace in the mind dove sta memoria."
--Ezra Pound, from Canto LXXV

We have lived on different continents,
and the solace of memory holds out against
ongoing persecutions, that initial caging
(like an animal) that you were forced to endure,
and yet you endured, that and more for many years,
rose to the occasion, wrote some of your greatest verses:
the wasp building its home of mud; the ant traversing
the grass blades, until you could write no more—
"and that day wrote no further", loved no further,
hoped no further than the end of the day—
Speare's Pocket Book of Verse, Lovelace's "To Althea,
From Prison" and Jonson's "Hast'ou seen the rose
in the steel dust" were your prayers and saviors.
Even when marginalized, you melded languages,
merged experiences, drew them together in the mind,
living in your own place. "That's the steepest pour
I've ever experienced." Poets are always anchored
in time and place. "I'll try not to spill this draught
on the poem." How far is far when you think on it,
from you, your final silent years, to me? Not far.
I keep your Selected Poems, the Cantos nearby,
a copy of Gaudier-Brzeska A Memoir at my bed.