You spoke of Horace on his Sabine farm,
his lime-deep valley, hyacinth in bloom,
with holm oak forests shuffling in the breeze.
He loved the spring, the clover-laden grass
his herds would feed on, drizzle-sweetened hills.
He lived, well free of Rome, as if the world
were leafy and reposed, the weekly gossip
flowing from the courts Augustus kept:
a gabbling stream of anecdote, opinion,
downright lies. Through confident, warm years,
with kingly patrons tending to his needs,
he dug the furrows of his perfect odes.
I know a few of us would surely prize
that farm: soft fontanel of private earth
in which to plow the furrows of our verse,
to separate the tangled roots of speech,
possess the ground, the poet’s measured tongue.
A few of us would love that greening world
with boundaries to walk and contemplate:
the pastures of desire, unweeded, blown
by riffles of blue wind; unforded brooks
of memory and dream; the icy cliffs
where waterfalls of purpose pour their vowels
through steady air, a music we could learn.
My friend, we follow in the Roman colter’s
wake in our own ways, not really farmers,
but poachers on the farm Maecenas granted.
Now weekly gossip flows along the wires
from Boston to Vermont; the capital’s
alive, but Caesars in their private jets
want nothing of us now. The mailman comes
with letters to aggrieve us, forms to fill.
I pay my debts, as you do, with a shrug
and turn to cultivate the ground, protected
by the barbed-wire fencing of our prose.
Unpatronized, we groom this inward land.