the winter anthology
Vol. 3
Lee Posna
Arboretum (9)
Here is a holly.
Now I am gone.
Fell dead through the unity
of dead history.
I shared with
an obsolete and moribund Aeneas
Silvius, Pius II, his black damask-
curtained litter, drawn
when thronging crusade-deserters passed
to keep his heart afloat
down that mortal aqueduct
to empty Ancona.
When you, nascent renaissance
poet-pope rowed me
back across a turgid Danube,
you spared me no
now I am gone.