Callimachus [#2]
Kent Leatham
They said you kicked, Heraclitus, and I
had to call off at the library to prevent the wreck
of volumes A through L, I cried that much.
Do you still remember those raki nights
when we talked so long the gods put an extra
fuse in the sun to punish our eyes the following dawn?
No, of course you don’t remember.
Ashes have no memories. You don’t even know
you were a poet once, one of the best:
they say as Death was pulling you down,
Death, the guy famous for reticence,
your words lifted from his lips like a bird…
Kent Leatham is a poet and translator. His work has appeared in dozens of journals, including Ploughshares, Fence, Poetry Quarterly, InTranslation, and Softblow, as well as in the 2013 Montreal Poetry Prize Global Anthology. Kent holds an MFA from Emerson College, and teaches at California State University Monterey Bay.
