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This poem is taken from PN Review 11, Volume 6 Number 3, January - February 1980.

Aeneas and After Brian Jones


Constituit et lacrimans "quis iam locus" inquit "Achate,
Quae regio in terns nostri non plena laboris?"


Horace Bids Farewell to Virgil

                                 (Odes I. iii
)

I trust, friend, you appreciate
the nervous cost to one who hates
the sea and loves late drink
of standing on the brink

while your unnecessary boat
drifts fainter in a queasy float
into liver-spotted mist.
A poet who's half-pissed

and whose scalp and wit are frozen
can't deliver a few well-chosen
words, sublime or droll.
...


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