I do not know if under an adverse god
I began to write…

(I do not know if there is still dust
on your poems,
ostentatiously ranged
on the library shelves
of my town's industrialists.)

I know all too well, though,
that behind the myth there is pain,
barbarity behind history.

I know all too well that Dido
is a part excessively suited
to any woman —

Virgil and Ovid
and you yourself
could sing of her.

I know that Pigmalion
is a brother no different
to any other;

nor Aeneas a lover
less sedentary
than that Ulysses
to whom you gave our voice.

Delenda est...?
No! You
have been
quite explicit:

"We must look for Poetry
where we know it is…",
without knowledge, maybe,
and under an adverse god,
headstrong, we began
to write.

Translated into English by Poetry Ireland