Although the next new poem is about another poem, about Ohio,
I thought for a while that I would like--
I've done some translating.
And sometimes when one translates,
if he loves the poem enough, it can turn
into a real poem of his own.
So that the translation by Thomas Campion of Catullus's
"Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,"
it's not as good as Catullus's poem,
but Catullus couldn't have written it.
It's a poem of his own.
And a poem I've loved for so many years, so many years.
It's the third Georgic of Virgil,
in which he is talking about life in the country,
for a while.
He was a city person but lived in the country.
It turns out, by the way, that there is a place in Ohio,
I'll be damned, I found out, called Mantua, Ohio.
And my son has a girlfriend from Mantua Ohio.
Imagine.
That was Mantovano was in Italy.
It's Mantua in Italy.
Virgil was from that place.
And it's a little hometown there.
I thought I might try a translation of that.
Maybe I will yet as it's worth handling,
dealing with because he loved his language, his native place.
But instead of doing that, his eclogue--
that's the eclogue in which he said
the incredibly beautiful line in the dactylic hexameter,
"Optima dies prima fugit."
The best days are the first ones to flee away.
In the pause in the line is "ah."
Then the rapid word following it.
Instead, I thought I would try to describe something
that happened to me one afternoon there in Warnock,
Ohio.
Warnock, Ohio, was not the best farm in the world.
But there were a couple of odd things that happened there.
And one of them was that a cow we had had a calf.
And that is the only birth that I've ever attended.
If someone asked me if I wanted to attend a birth,
I probably would say no, maybe I couldn't take it.
But I didn't have any choice that particular afternoon.
And it took me many years to wonder what I made of it.
What I made of it is this poem, such as it is.
The poem is called, "Well, What are You Going to Do?"
"I took a nap one afternoon in Ohio,
at the end of a pasture, just at the good moment when
Pet, our poor lovely lay moaning and gave birth to Marion,
my calf.
What was I going to do?
All I could do was wake and stand there.
I don't know anything about the problem of beautiful women.
I was afraid to run 200 yards to call my mother
and ask her what to do about beautiful women.
Besides, she wouldn't know either.
Two hours, two whole hours, while Pet
lay mumbling among the Grimes Golden apples that
fell from time to time.
I ate two or three, maybe.
What was I supposed to do there but eat the apples
while Marion's face peeked out slowly.
I ate the apples.
And when Marion was born, I helped her come out.
I had been in love with a lot of girls,
but that was my first time to clasp
the woman beneath her chin and whisper, come out to me,
come on, come on, and you can be Marion.
I led Marion out of her mother's belly,
down in the cold autumn thorns.
And there was a pile of horse manure I couldn't evade.
And so, by god, I did not even try.
All I could do was fall from time to time.
Marion's face was all right, speckled with rust
and more white than snow.
The one I was the more in love with was Pet, the exhausted.
I lay down beside her.
She snuffled.
She smelled like a Grimes Golden apple.
Then I carried Marion 200 yards down the pasture.
She delicately sprayed the insides of her beginning body
all over my work shirt.
I don't know that I belonged in that beautiful place.
But what are you going to do?
Be kind?
Kill?
Die?"