Issue 002 -poem three

Claudio Sansone

Poem Three

After some verses from the 古诗十九首
To Astrid

I remember reading that one
about a lonely cypress on a hill
(a metaphor, we were told, of e-ternity.)
forgot to mention the (plural.) rocks
heaped(-heaped.) in the stream (gesturing at,
or another sign of, e-ternity.),
then all that nonsense about being
invited to spend time between
heaven-earth (one word.) – and it was
all so sudden, to be such a guest
(i.e. to drink wine with a friend.)
but not know about which wine
was really better (less inebriating,
not demeaning to our friendship.)
and then it dawned on me that we might
not be the cypress nor the rocks
and then it was just dawn and as a guest
I kept drinking with my host
and enjoyed my time with Wan and Luo
and (someone I thought was named.)
Luoyang seemed to brim with life
as we ran around like crazed bureaucrats
swallowing streets, lanes, alleys—the whole plebeian grid
onto which the rich look down
from their paired lookouts
at the margins of the city
and it felt like Wan had a thing for Luo
so brought us drinking in the margins
of his city (that’s not quite right, but it flows.)
now that guests run out of time
faster than the wine runs out (faulty metaphor.)
and the two go off into the grid,
forgetful of their wives.

Claudio Sansone is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Literature at NCU. His work centers on ancient poetry and its receptions in antiquity and in the present. He is currently trying to learn Classical Chinese and is haphazardly chronicling his few successes and many spectacular failures through a series of creative translations of anonymous poems from the Han period. He has been chief editor of two Irish poetry magazines (Icarus and The Attic) and the founding editor of the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. He also served on the staff of the Chicago Review. His most recent published translation, a creative rendering of a Tocharian B love poem, appeared in Ancient Exchanges.