Stanzas for Sulmo (Sulmano)
*
I wish I were a girl in Sicily
on my lips was blasphemy.
Would Ovid whine that way
for his own exile, to be beached
again at the Black Sea,
out of reach of the beloved
hills of Sulmo, glittering
with grapes and goat droppings?
*
My poetry made me immortal
and my name still gives Phaon
breath in the story Ovid wrote
I am no longer joyless and dry
though the boy forgets
Sappho as soon as he picks
up his clothes, he forgets
what heat, what words, can do.
*
If indeed
we toiled at the task of love
you know
the man was no
boy or the boy
was no man.
I always had good
reason to prefer women.
*
Her face, more radiant
than Phoebus whose name
means shining,
blinds me to a thousand
and one others.
more heliotrope than human,
Without shame,
I still watch, I still wait.
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