American Classical League

Jocasta
Author(s): R.h. Morrison
Source: The Classical Outlook, Vol. 73, No. 1 (FALL 1995), p. 20
Published by: American Classical League
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43937793
Accessed: 25-08-2019 09:33 UTC

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 20 THE CLASSICAL OUTLOOK / Fall 1995

she, the mother, chaos to the dying;

this, where they come and go, their only home.
Or does she store for them, as in a void,
seeds of the fruit of some unripe abyss
that we call future? With that patient gait
through silvered darknesses and golden joys
we go from the emblazoned to the hidden
as once, out of the hidden, Gaia came.

The Classical Outlook publishes original poems in English on classic

themes, verse translations from Greek and Roman authors, and origin
Latin poems. Submissions should, as a rule, be written in tradition
poetic forms and should demonstrate skill in the use of meter, diction
and rhyme, if rhyme is employed. Original poems should be more tha
mere exercise pieces or the poetry of nostalgia. Translations should b
accompanied by a photocopy of the original Greek or Latin text; Lati
originals should be accompanied by a literal English rendering of the
text. Submissions should not exceed 50 lines.

DAVID MIDDLETON JANE PHILLIPS Jocasta

Editor for original Editor for translations
English verse and original Latin verse
R.H. Morrison

Black the void of the now

Anaxagoras Defends Himselfwhich ends my stricken life,
horror before which bow
Sarah Ruden both tainted man and wife.
University of Cape Town
Black is the future too,
Cape Town, South Africa
doomed to die by this rope,
and grave of every hope
Meletus: "You do not believe in the gods ... He says, that either of us knew.
jurymen, that the sun is a stone, and that the moon
is made of earth." Nothing can wipe away,
Socrates: "Do you think you are accusing Anaxagoras?" blackest of all, the past.-
-The Apology of Socrates Only these words I say,
now and forever my last.
"There was no knowledge; there was only bliss:
A courtyard in the evening when the sun
Took back its light. The seeds of my sweet prayers
Fell to the earth, and everything was done. Cold War Threnody
"It is not nature but the gods I love: After Horace Odes 1.37
They let me plant that hour in the ground;
They closed the world and made it strange to me: Carl Strange
The wind unseen, the sun that makes no sound.
Fairbanks, Alaska
"And when my self was all I recognized, For Richard Nixon
They listened as I wept to be alone-
Then showed me sun and moon like my own skull: Friends- and you are my friends- let us rejoice!
As solid and as changing as a stone." Let's raise a song today and stamp the ground,
disco and contra, Detroit Rap and shag.
Let's lift up toasts of every hoarded vintage,
Smirnoff and Jim Beam, saki, sauvignon.
Gaia
Those monsters of our midnight dread
who vowed to undermine us like disease,
R H. Morrison
those beasts before whose red and godless flag
Burnside, South Australia we learned to fear the end of all we love
have disappeared, reduced from Pravda-speak
She goes like one unwearied by much going to more mundane realities by time.
where everything is known for the first time,
in wonderment that chaos, left behind, Many have brought them there: Truman and Gorbachev,
should yet have had such riches to unfold. Marshall, Brezhnev, Ford. The crisis-points
And all this on a road where it is known that otherwise should be great battles, great retreats:
that every life will be her mortal child: Cuba, Prague, Tonkin, Tienanmen, the Wall.

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