THE ISLAND (CATULLUS 64)

Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was noble, heaven-sent, even.The gods gave us knowledge, and knowledge we turnedin service of a creed we used to believe in.That’s why our weapons were better than theirs.It’s written that this is when two fated lovers—one burned with lust, and one who assented—were approved by their fathers to make a new fatherout of that lust, and maintain the line.If only my compatriots—men of a better time,women as true as the breath of the mountainfrom which the hearth’s pine falls—were still here.But though your ears turn, I’ll still call your names,and having been summoned, you’ll drift down from the afterlifewith its unchanging boredom, to join us in hell.You first, Peleus, who took God’s mistress—youhandsome devil, did she love you?—as your wife.Did her grandmother grant you the blessingof the matriarch? Do you believe in the contract of love?The day comes, guests from every directioncrawl over the new to touch something of the old.Gifts spill from open hands, kind words from wet mouths,the ox rests, the grasses think they’ll retake the field.As the plows grow rusty in the early morning dewand theAs the chair you sit in gleams silver, and beside you,the bridal seat draped with an arresting textiledyed purple by the crushing of thousands of snails.Its threads show our nation’s heroes with their own arts,while, staring out a window in a fit of disbelief,from the shore of their island, Theseus’ fleet