This poem is taken from PN Review 44, Volume 11 Number 6, July - August 1985.

Aeneas in Britain

Frederick Turner

What can he do here in this ruined country?
How lovely and how dangerous it is
To the sprung mind of the winter hero;
How easy to be drawn into the vales
Of cider, cream, and staining blackberries.
All Britain seems to him a rose
Without a thorn, in an eternal summer.
He drinks the dark draught of that memory
Which, turned up, is a man's forgetfulness
Of what his fate cries out for him to do.

Some male disfigured thing in him would call
The dwellers in this land a race of cowards
Rooting like social rodents in the shells
Of fallen temples, domes, and architraves;
Looting the graven stones for urinals;
Punishing what in their young is splendid
...
Searching, please wait...