LESS VIRGIL

         He would settle by Mag Brook, himself
his barque laid up on the bank like a forearm leaning.
The ship’s cat, gone thin as a hem of a sail,
         he brought to the earth, its for-me-alone
inhuming. Let this diminutive hill of Troy
be all the west, he thought, and all ages,
         all persons; let Mary quite contrary
to this geography sit grudging on Europe’s edge.
It was in May. The trees of Mag Hill were in leaf.
Cattle came down to Mag Brook like the coming of life.

         He met the wise Sappho in her circle
of the mind. I live, she said, at the very hem
or selvedge of the isles of Greece, their dulse and seakale,
         already, like you, after Homer,
but I look to the east. Asia like silk, Sardis
like a purple sandal lie there, and a woman like the moon
         who once was mine. They leave us sad
...