On the journey to the mundane afterlife, You travel equipped to carry on your trade: A bronze, small-toothed saw to make repairs, The stylus and the ink pot and the scraper, Wax tablets bound into a little book. Here is the tortoise shell for the cithara, Bored through with holes for strings, natural sound box. Here is the harp's wood triangle, all empty -- The sheep-gut having long since decomposed Into a pure Pythagorean music. The beeswax, frangible with centuries, Has puzzled all your lyrics into silence. I think you were a poet of perfection Who fled still weighing one word with another, Since wax forgives and warms beneath revision. Copyright 2001 by The Modern Poetry Association. This poem appears in the April 2001 issue of @3Poetry Magazine.@1 http://poetrymagazine.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE RIVER by RALPH WALDO EMERSON THE PERSIANS (PERSAE): SALAMIS - MESSENGER by AESCHYLUS QUATRAIN by CHARLES GRANGER BLANDEN THE FAIRY FORT by ABBIE FARWELL BROWN PLAINT OF THE PINE by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON DOVECOTT MILL: 11. WEDDED by PHOEBE CARY |