It's still the same -- he turns, she turns -- the end of a candle burns, maybe, in the eye socket of a severed head. It's still the same wedding guests who fill these straw canoes, who float down river swinging their lamps and calling out for the groom. Orpheus is still mostly soil splashing onto soil where maenads squat. Maybe a shepherd found a head and carved the wet face from the white bone and now dreams some strange version -- a candle glowing in his little room -- of an early home. It's still the same. Eurydice is cold or alone. Or both. What if she ran ahead, long ago, and overtook that man she loved, on the path. What if she brushed quietly past him, and then she looked back? I'm tired of stories of the asp, and the wish of little wings where a god turns. It's still the same. Every night, those revelers calling from the water. I'd like to believe she found a way out of the earth one night and then reversed all that happened -- I'd like to believe she is wearing a wool shirt with tiny white buttons along the arms, and that we have four children who never visit and we eat long ornate meals together in perfect happiness and everything we ever wanted is ours for the asking and that she would please quiet those strangers on the river. It's still the same -- he turns, she turns -- story that burns. http://www.wlu.edu/~shenano | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NEUTRALITY LOATHSOME by ROBERT HERRICK OPPORTUNITY by JOHN JAMES INGALLS ARAB LOVE SONG by FRANCIS THOMPSON THE RUINS OF CORINTH by ANTIPATER OF SIDON PROLOGUE TO THE PLAY OF HENRY THE EIGHTH by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD |