Spare Words: Epode: You Do Not Go (after Horace)

(One in a Series)

I the juice of you, and you the juice of me, the hard

way of saying the pretty boys and pretty girls

with the flowing hair prettier still what causes the stir

of wardom from ashore, and brings the bounteous

gold to commerce skips and traces of under-the-table

dealings when your office was sacked at dawn,

and we stood to watch it burn to lay beside the fount

where dreams are born, and our oaths are strewn

to the fens and dales that reach the ears of our enemies,

who honey their words of peace with swords of ilexed

dread and serpent’s tongues that dripped fearsome storms

of whispered love and sleeped wolves to befriend.

You do not go lightly, this dank wen on your neck

a harkéd reminder of hills we dallied up-in;

a tree you have not loved, yet the mothers

of the mourned are grieved grieveously

by grief-stricken you, sick to naught

but the suffering of the wounded and the rich.

As children we played amongst the parlors

and planned of little but the age you’d rule;

do you remember, the ships of sail

and hoist we follied about in Kennebunkport,

our skivvies breezing in the toss of wind and lobster,

clammed our mighty loins in the joy of fruit.

Orion! Orion! Jefferson slumbers at the portico, and what

we know of smoldering ash is met with fearless truth.

Our course is set amongst the oiled grounds of your father

and, child of the goddess, I follow you to reserves

of bears and bulls and escaped elephants, where, fie leader,

I will apprehend your hunting bows and revel in your skill.

Lightly you do not go amongst the halls of your polls

and verily your peers wilt desert you, but I, I

by your side will sail the grand pond with you, though it give

no joy; the fates to be seen take their lead from you, do not err,

and blesséd be the sleep of the enemy that he may come

only again when your time is done, and lesser men are there.

Spare Words