poliphilo: (Default)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2009-11-16 11:25 am

Out Of Habit

I believe I have said all I once needed to say. If I continue speaking it is out of habit. I could, of course, repeat the things I once needed to say, but I hate to do that.

Actually I'm not entirely sure what the things I needed to say were. They had their moment. I spoke them. The moment passed. The archive of this blog contains them- if you care to look.

Ars longa vita brevis: in fact the reverse is true.

Here's something I'd like the archive to contain. A poem I wrote a good while back. The names are the names of the pleasure cities of the Nile delta- which were gaudy and gimcrack in the days of Antony and Cleopatra and have since been flooded.


CANOPUS
, HERAKLEION, MENOUTHIS

Once they danced here in tavernas,

Pigged on cakes and calimari,

Shagged divinely in the myrtles,

Praised Serapis, Lord of plenty,

While the flute-song, lightsome, winsome

Jigged above the sounds of water.

Light, bright water, sun-shot water,

Thickening as the diver searches

Silts in which white marbles sicken.


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