by Jena Woodhouse.
Perhaps you remember that brilliant morning
at Old Epidaurus, nine summers ago:
the cobalt Aegean, the shock of its waters
on flesh warmed by passion, after the show.
The cold marble tiers of the previous evening:
moonlight captured and frozen in moulds;
the silver horse hitched to a mulberry tree
where the odeion dreamed amid shoulder-deep reeds—
But you probably wouldn’t remember that day,
nor our laughter and tears,
nor the name of the play—
Archaic Fragment
Night returned me to archaic sanctuaries
among the ancient groves of olive trees,
but they had changed, or I had changed,
forgetting how long it had been,
how much had intervened,
and I could not recall the old gods’ names.
I dreamt about a black pea-hen,
eating pomegranate seeds—
Ageing Coryphée
So the man has not come
and I am alone
with ghosts of grease-
paint and acclaim:
shall I pour one more
glass of champagne,
shall I open my veins?
Polydeuces
Who now recalls the colour of his eyes,
whether they matched the cobalt tesserae
scattered from rich mosaics of the villa’s floor.
Perhaps they were blue, perhaps his hair
was fair, but all the extant likenesses
are monochrome. For Herod Atticus he was
the world. Compared to such a love,
the world seemed colourless and small.
Polydeuces was a pupil and eromenos of Herod
Atticus (AD 101-177) an Athenian rhetorician
as well as a Roman senator and tutor to two
future emperors of Rome.
Sad Erotes
They hover at sleep’s portal with their undelivered
messages: a trust betrayed, the free dreams of a slave,
an old hetaira’s tales.
All night they ride the tunnels of the underground,
charged with nocturnal energy
that dissipates with day,
and like somnambulists they roam
the hidden streets that dreamers take,
and entering arenas of unconsciousness,
direct the play