in muslin , scattered with marigolds,
and roped to bamboo stretchers , wait their turn.
Stacks of wood lean against toppling stu pas.
A boat with patchwork sail is piled high
with splintered wood , another with ashes
which, later, will be released into the river.
By now, after so many centuries,
the river's silt is the color of ashes ,
and during the monsoon it washes up
on the opposite shore, joining
that gray desert that goes on forever,
a vast and formless void, where the world ends,
and where, with every sunrise, it begins.
EDWIN ZIMMERMAN
Dido Was Smitten
Dido was smitten by that great dolt Aeneas.
She did not know why. Perhaps
It was the bronze helmet with bristling arc
Of horsehair, or his gleaming pectorals,
Or the dark bass intoning the fall of Troy,
Or the squat broadsword dangling at his side.
She was smitten but he was not
And the gifts she gave he later gave away,
Placating some lesser god or goddess
Or dressing the corpse of a secondary hero
With robes she had woven, embroidered with silver,
Forgetting, if he ever knew, how she had looked
When they went hunting, a quiver at her back,
Her short cloak caught around her shoulders,
Her hair tied up with gold and a brooch of gold
Pinning her scarlet dress as she moved like a doc
With an arrow in her that was not yet felt.
