John Talbot

Envieth Not

Epitaph of Menophilos

Such days as were my lot I passed in joy

Buoyed in the quickening flux of poetry.

Bacchus was never very far away,

Or Aphrodite either. As to friends:

Not one of them can tell of an offense

I ever did them. I am Menophilos,

A son of Asia, till I left to settle

Far from home in the sundown hills of Italy.

Here I held my ground, and now am held

Among the dead. I never did grow old.

Some spirit must have whispered: Pay

           A visit to an obsolete

           Old woman. Let young smiles defeat

The tedium of her vacant day,

 

And let her marvel that with all

           The pressures of their wedding soon

           Approaching, they found time to loan

An hour to housebound her. She’ll tell

 

Her friends (those that survive) how wrong

           It would have been to criticize

           Young people for their modern ways.

They made her, for that hour, belong

 

Once more to the panache of youth.

           The zest of her grand-nephew groom,

           The bride’s high spirits, warmed the room.

– All this she told me. But the truth,

 

I’m pretty sure, is otherwise.

           My guess is that his mother meant

           To gratify a maiden aunt

And ordered them to compromise.

 

So off they went, the groom and bride,

           And paid their due respects – but watched

           The time, and when the slow hand touched

The twelve, they deemed that they’d complied,

 

And showered their polite regrets,

           And left the tall clock in the hall

           To keep her company, and toll

The barren afternoon. And yet

 

I do not pity her. A please,

           A thanks, a grudging niece who brings

           A birthday card – those little things

That I’d call bare civilities –

 

Her heart mistranslates into love

           And gallantry. Each caller leaves

           Endowed with virtue she perceives

Gone out of them they didn’t have.

 

Myself? I wink, I glibly please

           And play along, but she instead

           Receives me like a table spread

In the presence of her enemies.

 

Her cup runs over with such strong

           Mistaken gratitude. So say

           She’s blind to bitter truth. You may

Be right, but you’d be in the wrong. 



John Talbot’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review, The New Criterion, The Spectator, The Dark Horse, First Things, The American Scholar, New Verse Review, and many others, as well as in anthologies from W. W. Norton, Yale University Press, and Waywiser. He has published two volumes of poems and many articles, reviews, chapters, and books on English, Greek, and Latin literature—most recently a volume on C. H. Sisson, co-edited with the scholar and poet Victoria Moul.