sonya taaffe

1.
These gouges where glaciers furrowed toward the sea
were smooth-sloped still, ice-muscled, snowbound;
these waves, a salt-waste...

Sappho with violets in your smile,
why lie awake counting the Pleiades?
Why pace the grey shore
with the sea hissing of lost lovers...

Schliemann digs by day in the winds of Hisarlık,
prospecting for myth with digammas and dynamite.
His children’s names roll like...