In my cocoon, "Well you needn’t"
is followed by "Misterioso," and I remember
last week reading Petronius’s droll
"Timui ego, ne me poetam vocaret."
Taking the dog poop back
to the bin this morning I noticed
one purple crocus had
assayed the air.
Flowers don’t do well back there.
The weedy "Tree of Heaven," imported
by a hoary horticultural Jesuit,
poisons the soil.
The radio reaches in to say
two years ago today a Caterpiller™
crushed Rachel Corrie
in the Gaza Strip, so I write
so to speak, "My Senator,"
to send the shit
(metaphorically speaking)
to Washington. Where
under the Upas dome of the Capitol
no crocus blows.
16 March 2005
Richmond, Virginia
(Note: "Ex is, qui in porticibus spatiabantur, lapides
in Eumolpum recitantem miserunt. At ille, qui plausum
ingenii sui noverat, operuit caput extraque templum
profugit. Timui ego, ne me petam vocaret." Satyricon
90. "Some of the people who were walking in the
colonnades threw stones at Eumolpus as he recited. But
he recognized this tribute to his genius, covered his
head, and fled out of the temple. I was afraid that he
would call me also a poet." (Loeb, pp. 211-13.)
David Latane
http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds)
|