This poem is taken from PN Review 188, Volume 35 Number 6, July - August 2009.
Two Poems65
Although I’m utterly drained by grief, Hortalus,
distracted by despair from the know-all Virgins,
My mind’s eye birthing still more stillborns for the Muses,
vision wobbly to a vanishing-point -
Not long since a wave rose on the full flood of Lethe
to lap my brother’s death-white foot,
Snatched from my view, buried in a Trojan ditch,
then crushed beneath the beach at Rhoetum
*
sentenced never to gaze on your face? Who
I love more than life itself with a capital ‘L’,
evermore sing sad songs for your dying,
Just as the Daulian pipes between bough and shades,
mourning Itylus she laments murdering -
Still, in the face of such deep sorrow, Hortalus,
I will mail you these fine lines of the son
Of Battus, so you’ll know your requests weren’t scattered
...
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