Letter to his wife
Publius Ovidius Naso
Tristia Book1.VI
A Version

Her praise

No Laura was more loved by poet
no Lara needed more by one
than you, dear wife, by me. Deserving
too a luckier poet, perhaps a finer man.
Your heart of oak props up my home.
If anything's left me, it's thanks to you.
You keep creditors and spoilers at bay,
all who came running to the wreck.

His false friend

A wolf driven by hunger and bloodthirst
prowling round a fenceless fold,
A buzzard circling overhead eyeing down
for gobbets of unburied dead,
that's You-Know-Who, treacherous,
tearing up my wealth - had you not
stopped him, stood your ground with
few friends I can never thank enough.

Unworthy praise

High praise from a wretched man, but true praise,
if praise from one like me has any weight.
No woman better, not even Hector's wife,
or Laodamia companion even to death.
If Fortune made you great Homer's wife
She'd have you up there well above Penelope.

Her royal friend

Was this your nature, nothing learned from
Anyone? Were you born like this?
Or from that Princess your friend for years
Did the royal way of the loyal wife rub off,
as if by long acquaintance you took her stamp
if mortals can the stamp of Highness bear.

His apology, his pledge

See, my lines lack that bounce of old. They are
well below the honors due to you.
That vigor and verve that I had once, remember,
has been deadened by all this stress.
I should have put you first among my Heroines
first among them for your great soul.
Still, if these verses can be licked to any lasting worth
you'll live forever in my poetry.

Something Heavy

They are handling something heavy
from the back of a truck
by the bus stop

driver
middle- aged first mate mainly watching
and apprentice boy

each wrapped in one task only
of multiple parts and manipulations
and something very, very heavy.

Driver pushes the buttons
maneuvers the lift shaft to its bay alongside
and first mate mainly watches.

Apprenticeboy pulls the fulcrum
to the centre of the world
on small wheels

where anything that can come down
can be wheeled.
He is hefting the heaviness and the buttons' lurching.

Waiting and watching, inside the back of the truck
something is coming out
and has to be carried.

Driver has no sense of weight
in his pressing thumbs
first mate is mainly watching.

Something very, very heavy in the back of the truck
was not there
when my bus took me up

that part of the morning
and let me down where the whole world
is lifted on words.

^

Biography

Chris Neenan teaches English Literature at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. He is also English consultant at Italy's central bank, Banca d'Italia. His poems have appeared in Electric Acorn, Stirring, ForPoetry, Cortland Review.