Poets are always reaching out to precursors
either through shared sensibility
or through shared situations within history.
And I think it's no coincidence that
of it is in some ways the Roman poet to whom
many American poets attorney as this country
is poised so uneasily between a tradition of being a Republic
and the menace of being a empire,
and the transition from one governance to another,
of it, of course, exiled at that very moment at which Rome
transited from a Republic to an empire.
He was exiled, Thomas, on the Black Sea.
He couldn't speak the language at first.
And this is called "First Spring in Thomas."
Ankle deep in mud, we watched the mute young woman shiver,
selling off the springs of lavender and mint.
Head of the emperor spinning on the trestle board.
And as she fumbled with a piece of string,
he shut his eyes, so crows packed out
the eyes of newborn lambs.
Rome is a moistened crumb, he thought,
sniffing his fingertips.
And silence is a patient enemy who
waits beneath the foreign syllables for bread and wool,
and for my shadow thickening or fraying
as fog thins or gathers shrouds out of the wound.
And for the rough green tongue of mint against my own
so soon after the thaw.