19 April 2009

C. Dale Young

[from C. Dale Young's The Second Person, Four Way, 2007]

excerpt from "Tryptych at the Edge of Sight"

IX

We had gone so far, down past the ferns
dead and swaying in the shadow of a breeze,
down into a land half swamp, half ocean floor.

Fancying ourselves modern Greeks, we had descended
into the earth -- not to point out souls like Anchises,
but to point out lichens, mosses, molds, those classics

seldom studied anymore -- but our sense of direction
was terrible, and we had not summoned Virgil
or Edith Hamilton to guide us out of that other world.

The Second Person: Poems (Stahlecker Series Selection)

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