This poem first appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of The Antioch Review.

 

UNTITLED (Dido IV)

by G.C. Waldrep

if there were no
Sappho
we would make of
you       a Sappho

the fragment
accommodates, i.e.
breakage

(Zeno’s paradox,
we are all
more in our parts
than in sum)

in Afghanistan
the poor
break up artifacts,
they get
more that way

fire, foliage
understand this

Tiepolo’s hound
luxuriates
in the picture plane

lily me
recognizably, as a god
once would have

beauty is not
color,
whatever you say

(though you say it
in French,

of course, I hear
You,

shepherd, through
a shattered glass)

***

G. C. Waldrep’s most recent books are Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA Editions, 2011), a lyric collaboration with John Gallaher, and The Arcadia Project:  North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012), an anthology co-edited with Joshua Corey.  He teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.

 

 

 

 

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