POEM
Lemnos
Karl Kirchweythe deep male growl of the sea-lashed headland
—Sophocles, Philoctetes
August long ago, the summer Lemnian
(not like the deeds of those who killed their men),
the self a glowing bead, like Hephaestus falling
daylong out of heaven in the old story,
the island's interior a forge, a glory hole,
the odor of wild thyme borne offshore steadily,
the Aegean Sea purple, wine-dark, without epithet;
and as I walked on the beach, my mother not long dead,
the perfect crystal of my self-regard
so lately flawed, and landscape made to echo
my own low cry in the island's empty places,
I found a pure white bone that wind and salt
had scoured of every grief and all self-pity:
and so I came to the love of others.
Source: Poetry (March 2008).
This poem originally appeared in the March 2008 issue of Poetry.
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Poet and translator Karl Kirchwey received a BA from Yale College and an MA from Columbia . . . MORE »
