The Common Bond (English / French / Irish / Welsh)

Where do poems go
when the poet dies
when his people die
when his language is a relic

I know

Some of them, the strangely "lucky" ones
come to Montgomery County
New York
not the city
fie upon you
upstate
back of beyond
population 49,000

in our midst
Catullus has sung the praises of Lesbia
and Sappho of Lesbos the praises of her bien aimée
Gilgamesh has mourned Enkidu's worming
Ovid has demonstrated Roman metamorphoses
Pwyll and Arawn have ruled each other's lands
Maeldúin has sailed to his many islands becauseof his geis
A Pillow Book has been digested
Oedipus dug out his eyes
and some Egyptians extoled their love and lust
Daoism and Hindusim married in haste and gave birth to some other faiths
and some Sri Lankans or Ceylonese
depending on your prediliction
longed for missing lovers
Sufists and the Augustus had an evening nibble
no one died
god save it
and heaven forbid
the exploits of a dull Poconian Dutch Welshman
embarassed the tender eyes of some bumpkins
I know where poems go when they die

by happenstance someone reads them
in a distant land
where texts are still exhalted
picked up cheap
at a book market
perhaps in a cathedral square
next to Genet and Heidegger
underneath some Mapplethorpe
oh he of questionable lens

and by hook
by crook
some of those words wander back
to the auris puplicus
and god help us
some one hears

so then in some small valley
in the America of tomorrow
perhaps in Chad
adrfit in an Ice Age verdant Tibesti
a swarthy lad in Faya Largeau
may even read some trash
discarded
in a heap
written by that same Pocononian Dutch Welshman
and see the common bond....