Suppose it were Friday lxxvi: It's fair to wonder

Mes anciens

    I sit here in a shelter

      behind the words

    Of what I'm writing,

      looking out as if

    Through a dim curtain of rain,

      that keeps me in here.

    The words are like a scrim

      upon a page,

    Obscuring what might be there

      beyond the scrim.

    I can dimly see there's something

      or someone there.

    But I can't tell if it's God,

      or one of his angels,

    Or the past, or future,

      or who it is I love,

    My mother or father lost,

      or my lost sister.

    Or my wife lost when I was

      too late to get there,

    I only know that there's something,

      or somebody, there.

    Tell me your name. How was it

      that I knew you?

   

    Mr Ferry's translations of Virgil

    and Horace enrich a Western mind's

    experience of life. To classicists

    they enable several layers of com-

    panionship, and for readers without

    Latin, only one or two less. At the

    same time, the publication of this

    collection of his own poetry strikes

    a sort of coup de foudre, in which

    an elating part of their challenge

    lies in revealing, as Ford Madox

    Ford has put it, that a man could

    stand up. For English speakers this

    is scrupulously and modestly, not

    showily or shallowly shorn of al-

    lusion to other glory, other times.

    The humble can understand it; we

    others are welcome to lay our bur-

    den down. This is original and gor-

    geous, as if its balsamic qualities 

    were infused with new wine, and its 

    flickering interwoven with the ages.

               I know such eyes that look so far,

               I follow them to parse the grit 

               they blink away. 

               It is not enough for me, to know 

               there is a further sight, without 

               citing who would give it in his gaze.

               But admiring is remembering, while
               learning is differentiating, dis-
               tinguishing, and inconvenient. How
               do they persist, as if for me?  
               I always wonder.

David Ferry

Scrim

Bewilderment

  New Poems and

  Translations

op. cit.

i    Ben Eidem

ii   Winchimes Cypress Point
iii  Jacob Wiechmann