ὡς πολλοῖς ὄμμασιν εἰς σὲ βλέπω

By Sonya Taaffe

23 November 2009

Imagine him dreamy, broad-shouldered,

once a wrestler with a poet's owl eyes

and so rarely laughing, by lamplight

writing star-gazer, my star and sky—

not the play of forms and abstracts

stark as shadows cast by sun within a cave,

but the gravity of hand answering hand,

a scroll of Aischylos, a kylix filled again,

a face, long fallen into dust, heaven-tilted

to watch a comet passing, lost and bright.

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Poems and short stories by Sonya Taaffe have won the Rhysling Award and been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. A selection can be found in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens and Singing Innocence and Experience. She holds Master's degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale; earlier this year, she named a Kuiper belt object. Her livejournal is Myth Happens. You can see more of her work in our archives.

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