The Green Horse

Yusef Komunyakaa

The kneeling figure is from Yama or Carthage,

& I ask, What was his worth in gold, in salt,

spices, statuary（雕像）, or commemorated axioms?

L, if we weren't brave enough to believe

we could master time, we wouldn't have

locked hands or kissed the other wordless.

The old gods where smelted down in shops

with crosses etched above the doorframes,

pressed into the coinage of a new empire

as palm readers were flogged in the market.

But of course there sits Marcus Aurelius

with stoic（坚忍的） mediations on a borrowed tongue,

gazing out at sublime poppies, an eternal

battlefield, his hand extended as a scepter

over the piazza where his bronze horse

cantered up on to Michelangelo's pedestal

carved from marble steps of the temple

of Castor & Pollux, & we wait for him

to outflank（迂回，挫败） the epochs of wind & rain.

L, everything around here is an epitaph.

Even the light. This morning, squinting out

a window as rays play off a stone cistern,

I hear someone whisper, "Waste no time

arguing about what a good man should be,

the worms will give us their verdict

by nightfall." I don't know who said this,

but today, love, I'm brave enough to say,

Antiquity, here's my barbarian shadow

squatting under the horse's raised right hoof.