A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

(for Merrill Rippy)

Yonder three nuns come trailing their tattered Latin,
And there a lady blue nimbussed, High Priestess of Grammar,
The freshmen are lost in autumnal quads of confusion,
The drunken Greeks lowing like cattle at bay,
False tallies are taken and totaled, vespers et matins,
The wrong books are ordered, the computer develops a stammer,
The faculties mingle, the Deans are betrayed by their shoes,
It is saffron September along University Way.

Here and now those present respond to the usual charges,
Those who are absent are meted their usual fate
Of being unloved (though approved) in the minutes of meetings,
The Patrons of Art are granted their usual largess,
Whole classes are killed as the usual funds are depleted,
The usually tardy are, as usual, late.
Now and here the students seem cleaner, coiffures the fashion,
Drugging more common, thieving no longer an art,
Their memories shorter, shorter affairs of the heart.

Ubi sunt? then and you they cannot imagine,
Your presence their history, dim as democracy’s dream,
Plutarch a stud in the belt of an ancient Orion,
Spinoza a curious form of Italian ice cream;
As in all of the journals poems are beginning to come,
Baffled late casualties of enraged Vietnam,
We rattle our sabres and prepare to make war
In El Salvador.

But tomorrow, when Telemachos sneezes and his mother laughs,
When feckless Odysseus homes from the haunts of hell,
When in the great hall the suitors are brought to gaff,
Out of the shambles all manner of things may be well.
Only last night in a fit of drunken dumbassery
From some whore’s apartment a mewling metriculant fell
Down eons of anguish, an iron sky,
Down time, down space, down the languishing classes,
The wrought web of art alone catching his cry,
Witnessing his singular dying,
Translating: the cause of war is all history;
Teaching: the burden of living is that you bury me,
Trouble-maker, vain of knowing.
For us is left the weariness of rowing,
Time will bring death, and we remain of good cheer.
And always surprising: Elpenor! what are you doing here?

Elsewhere to eastward where hills are beginning to flame,
One runs as Pheidippides ran and carries your name.