Here are the apples of the west, and here
the ship of vines, the city-wrack, the path
the lyre strung back from the losing dark;
here, unburnt, Alexandria’s scrolls,
and in the agora two tragic actors
are quoting to one another the tenth Muse:
but I say it’s just this, whatever someone
loves- A satyr’s mask and a leaf of oak,
an offering. Here, a wine-cup with the Sphinx
inside. It is no riddle: turn by turn,
we pass the adamant and shoulder back the sky.
Sonya Taaffe has a confirmed addiction to myth, folklore, and dead languages. Poems and short stories of hers have won the Rhysling Award, been shortlisted for the SLF Fountain Award and the Dwarf Stars Award, and been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, The Best of Not One of Us, Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2006, Best New Romantic Fantasy 2, and You Have Time for This: Contemporary American Short-Short Stories. A respectable amount of her work can be found in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books). She holds master’s degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale.
Image: Satyrn und Nymphen, Joseph Heintz the Elder, 1599.