Ovid old
by
As a pale gauze
rose over Asia, he awoke
surrounded by, not Rome,
but huts, hanging
like tattered effigies of home
from threads of cedar smoke;
Europe was dark.
The woman by him also woke,
gently helped him to stand,
wrapped him in fur,
and led him outside by the hand
to see the sun’s great yolk
push up against
the horizon’s rim. After it broke
and bled into the bowl
of the Black Sea,
it rose again, transformed and whole.
For minutes, neither spoke.
“Time,” he recited,
“tames the bullock to the yoke.”
He laughed, more blithe than bitter,
the way he did
these days when he could find no fitter
punchline to some old joke
than himself. The woman
knew the laugh if not the joke,
the moods if not the meanings
of his strange words,
uttered aloud, to no one—keenings
that once had made him choke
with grief, but that
evolved, as Daphne’s cries (a cloak
of bark abrading her body)
gave way to birdsong
in her branches. Some things no god
or Caesar can revoke.
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