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This poem is taken from PN Review 158, Volume 30 Number 6, July - August 2004.

On the Way to the Tomb of Kleoboulos (translated by Christopher Middleton) Joachim Sartorius


`The poems he wrote, however, numbered more than three thousand verses. A brief letter to Solon has survived.' A. Heinold, Biographien aller bekannten griechischen and lateinischen Autoren. Wien-Prag, 1800.


Now the eyes are being emptied of summer light.
Now the sea is being emptied.
Now language brims, being listened to.
What has she been doing for the past year?
What were you looking for, over the years?

The way, barely a way, goes through stony fields.
We grow bigger, because the light is softer,
and as if we stood on a wheel or a sphere
like that weighty naked woman in the old pictures,
we try to keep our balance.
The sphere rolls. World opens up.
The tomb grows and lives counter to this world,
the new bays, mountains in the evening mist.
...


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