Classic Poem

In the dense scopes
Jupiter progenitor,
perfumed a Christian,
fishes in the reefs
with ancient weights
or sometimes wanders
an apocryphal white goat.

And Hrothgar the wandering scop,
heartrover among your fathers,
sails the North Sea
with a load of deerhides
and bird feathers
and two thousand tods
of whalebone for the Danes.

And Saracen physicians
under a pecan tree
discuss the heart.

These unconnected images no doubt
once represented agents
and fellows bearing yokes
but that is not the way
they speak to me.

I made them
but took away their speech
and gave them instead a precious
patina of ancient associations.
That is how they got their mystery
and speak to me.

What, am I in love then
with my own images, an Onan
wrapped in their protective strangeness?
shrinking from what failure?

Strange that such a patina
should be more durable
than the actual Hrothgar!