Seattle Small Books Company

On Ancient Paths

Imagine the medieval:

A middle-aged Ezra

In his Italian castle,

The verbal architect

Inside his contrived

Through which the oracular

Bombs fell during

The outraged war.

Uncle Ez:

Three leveled poet,

Critic and carpenter; well,

(too) “E.P.”

Imagine on these stones,

Captain Eliot Krishna

At the helm:

During the sea journey

Over the sunboiling sea

To that time present,

That sempiternal now,

He pilots his craft around

The everpresent rock

In the ocean whose shores

Limit the white wash.

There, the ancient temple,

There, the fallen column,

There, the empty acroterion:

No consuetudinal poet

To sing the “Ovidian Rag.”