I like the way the poem starts! “And then... (etc etc) it went away” so I
know so much has happened, and the “it” word is such a powerful way of
showing the struggle for detachment.

The phrase “dream prisoned in the head, / had failed” puzzles me a little.
Could it be - a/my/our dream? The phrasing seems so clipped I’m struggling
to interpret it (and so am probably wobbling into interpretations that
aren’t necessary...). (Or is it only me that's got confused or feels
unsure?) (It may be that the image of the dream is integral to the
experience Vergil was writing about that it doesn’t need additional words...
or it could be that you’re (just) referring to the contemporary experience
here.

And I like the intention of throwing me back to people that belong top an
ancient other culture, helping me to see the (classic) universality as well
as the particularity of the experience you’re writing about.
But what I like most is the tightness of the poem. It seems to make its own
decisions when it’s going to rhyme (and when it isn’t) and I can’t detect
any word or phrase that seems to be interjected to satisfy any external
pressures.

A class act.

Thanks for the read,

Bob




>From: Sally Evans <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New Sub: Anchises
>Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 22:40:34 +0000
>
>Anchises
>
>And then, because it couldn't be the end,
>it went away for twenty years. He, older
>than I am now, and I, then, bidding him
>farewell, the way we do in careful code
>when someone who has journeyed close with us
>lies on that river-bank, the curtained bed.
>
>We'd parted on the telephone for good.
>The next day someone put me through again.
>Language was then not language, not a code,
>a bridge or anything, beside that shore
>he was now queueing by, and moving on ‹
>for his was not the boat I would be getting.
>
>Language, a well that had run dry at last,
>a mocked mirage, dream prisoned in the head,
>had failed, for all my knowledge of it. Neither
>the widest spaces brooding in the skies
>nor false reflections beckoning my eyes
>held hope for it. Farewell meant what it said.
>
>On unresolved, with many things, but more
>to do with speech, I journeyed till I heard
>a line from Vergil I had known for years
>but hadn't noticed, or it hadn't stayed:
>how brave Aeneas, visiting Anchises,
>thrice had struggled to embrace the shade.
>
>Sally Evans




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