In raptures over Chapman’s Homer, Keats forgets
who discovered the Pacific—not stout Cortez
with eagle eyes but Balboa upon a peak in Darien.
Where he withdrew his handkerchief and saw
the death warrant drop of arterial blood,
a fate too deep for tears. Years, I was afraid
someone would refer to you in past tense,
and I’d sink like an animal past the dream
of evolution clean into disrepair. You lived—
this wasn’t that sort of tragedy. More like
a fairground after rain where heavy tents
had gauged large crevices. Franz said the silences
need to be loved, perhaps more than the words
that describe them in time. The dog cries
because it sets the human world in motion,
and I rise to stop the wailing, accusative at times.
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Cuplikan dari If You Love That Lady: Poems. Hak Cipta (c) 2026 milik Maya C. Popa. Digunakan dengan izin penerbit, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Hak cipta dilindungi sepenuhnya.
