Sonnet About Orpheus (Where)
You are here. At the end
of a sentence. Which is where,
(according to Blaser,) the gods are
an adventure. I thought that “here” meant
the period at the end of
“you are here.” The black dot, black
hole. But the arrow of “you are here”
points to something on a map, at
the entrance to the park, maybe
just the fork in the road, a cross-
roads, or the cave mouth
(of hell), guarded by the 3-headed dog.
If this is the Endgame
you are free to say
anything you want. It is no longer
a dialogue. You could have
“hanged your harp on the willows
in the midst thereof”* No one asked you
to bring back the dead.
Not even Eurydice. But you did.
–Berlin, 2019
*Psalm 137
on the occasion of
Brian Fawcett’s 75th birthday
Author
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