THE WREATH:
AFTER BACCHYLIDES
Are they setting foot
Ashore, or are they getting
On? Is it the end
Of a premeditated voyage
Or is it the beginning?
Muse, do we recognize
Among the pleasure seekers
One to whom virtue
Once was an alternative?
I do not know who knows,
Save that one by one
The tenses are exploited,
Time itself is made
Slave to a different employment
As by a god-like labour
That could not be put off:
The something of the present
Painfully altered
To a picture of the past
Where anyone may see
As in a rear-view mirror
What he imagines best
About that other world. So
It is not possible to tell the colours of the flowers.
The porpoises that leap among the waves
Lead secret lives, shyly conspicuous.
Skill is a tyrant over seem and
be.
Whose wedding chamber was a watery tomb?
