Classic Poem

Now I know how a mermaid's eye
would look — wet marble-
socketed, sea blue, young and wild —
hostile a little — over the cry-
mouth blowing pearled

spray landward under smacked-flat hair.
Mortals, mortals, her
harpy, her sea-sapphire eyes
mock as she surfaces to stare —
who helped capsize

Ulysses' fleet and saw the drowned
come, yanked by fishes,
down glimmering to Poseidon's halls.
This summer she emerges, bound
by four blank walls

in waves the color of tourmaline —
a tiny Aegean —
like one daubed on an amphora
or book, giving a child's sea-scene
its cool aura

of abstract waves ... Oh abstract waves
sparkling her dolphin
loins and her mackerel glance —
Time — that has drowned Homer — and saves
her ignorance!











By permission of the author.