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.