A shepherd tried to ruin for me
The eloquent myth of Arcady;
That breathing couplet of antiqued joy.
A feeling I had since I was a boy—
An idea that Greece was a song
That I, cataclysmically wrong,
Sensed the tune that I was fed
Of pastoral beauty somewhere read
Was but a dream of wrathful Rood
Whose salvation, misleading and good,
Stood alone in its mournful place
For my imagination to trace
The warring words of a blitheful ditty,
Of a red-head perched, so true and pretty.
And I gave that shepherd a frightful stare
As a boy grown old with Aesop’s mare.
The solstice revolved around a setting sun
And my stammering desire rolled undone
In the tearfully drenched aftermath,
And desire swayed from my immanent path.
© 24II09 Le Même War Press
