Walt Whitman In Naples

I sit in the one classroom left

in San Domenico Maggiore

where Swabian Frederick

endowed a university in Naples

eight centuries ago. The chair

is high-backed and sturdy, oak

dark from surviving reigns of sun.

Thomas Aquinas sat on it before me,

large, cowled shoulders rubbing

the carved dolphins, scallop shells,

and stars to a patina, refuting errors

of Averroes on the procession

of the Holy Ghost. The walls are

the color of new wheat this noon.

Whitman fills the room in my voice,

his language strange

to Latin and less mellifluous

than sibilant Neapolitan.

Walt's bravura, a newer humility

from a continent where the Summa

is an antique of philosophy,

delights the green ears of my young

students and assures them

no love of God is possible unless

preceded by a love of self, proving

that the past ages but never dies.