3.5 To the Korean pug dog
The black metal dog’s twin lives
In my twin brother’s house. I like to recall,
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, your deadpan question:
“Why does the Muse persist in telling stories
Of the councils of the Gods and such high things
Accompanied by the attenuating sounds
Of my jocund lyre unsuitable for this?”
The simple facts are these: I have a brother.
We shared our mother’s womb. She died. We shared
Her household’s treasure. This was mostly memories
Because with her great love, my father, she lived
Memorably in many different places. Now
The household dogs of memory guard her grand-
Daughters in my brother’s house, and in my house
Her grandsons. Except that they, too, have all
Voyaged on. Disconsolate, untwinned for years,
My mother’s black Korean pug dog props
My front door open. Sometimes my kids
Come through it and sometimes we remember their grand-
Mother’s house of treasures. They roll their eyes
As my lyre goes out of tune. But there is one memory
For which they can’t mock their maudlin father,
Nor the vexed gods unstring his lyre: my dauntless
Mother, on a Karnifuli riverboat, tossing
A biscuit tin of piss in the monsoon flood.
© Ian Wedde |
