After Callimachus

By John Talbot

Somebody thoughtless dropped your name:
        “Such a shame
about Heraclitus—and so young.”
        I bit my tongue,
but hot tears came. Mind’s inward screen
hosted a scrum of flashbacks: long, late-teen
        bull sessions, bulldozing through
politics, parties, metaphor, rhythm, pun
and punishment, till we’d talked the sun
        out of his sky. But you,

friend, long gone to dust, you’re still in touch:
your poems, those living nightingales, still feel
heat of the sun and moonshine. Their songs peal
forever silvery beyond the all-
devourer’s clutch.

John Talbot is a professor of English at Brigham Young University and the author of The Well-Tempered Tantrum, a collection of poems. His work has appeared recently in The Yale Review, Poetry, The Iowa Review, and Agenda and his translations from ancient Greek will appear in a forthcoming Norton anthology.

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