PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[after Callimachus' poem, Epigram 28]

You were told correctly:  I was thought to be another's

(a local spinster, the arrangement was my mother's).

For her, I felt no thrill of aroused affection;

to her, I entertained not the least connection.

And in the place of Love, which is entirely sacred,

she placed the profanity of her seething hatred

and prejudice toward dissent and the unconformable.

You, who have lived three times the amount of my years,

directed your disappointed words to your poetry.

Those verses displayed your usual eloquence,

but the implicit statement of your discrete desire

spoke to the need that I began to feel in my soul.

That kind of resonant, verbal authenticity

provided the most convincing evidence

of a truth that no amount of fictive artistry

could declare, or even assemble, or even inspire.

I did not doubt the heat or saltiness of your tears,

nor the extent of the clodhopping perfidy

that condemns our natures in all grammatical tenses

that raises implicit walls and invisible fences

to separate worthy lovers, and keep them apart.

Such prudes are no better than an after-dinner fart.

J-Called