Andrew Szilvasy
Ekphrastic (I)
Sarcophagus Depicting a Battle between Soldiers and Amazons
The broken, headless warriors fight, of course,
for love: the men, to glorify their names
(and Rome), beat back the force of spear and horse
and roam the marble coffin, numb now and tamed;
the Amazons, as Herodotus tells us,
must kill a man if they're to marry one,
and so they battle, by life and love impelled
to fell a Roman, or else live alone.
Need they present the bloody witness of a man?
The limbless, or the beheaded on this tomb—
was it for future husbands they remain
frustulent?
Think on this, and think too on
the man who, missing and missed, waits instead
at home, longingly, for a severed head.
Bio
Andrew teaches British Literature outside of Boston and lives in the city with his wife and two cats. He has work forthcoming in Modern Poetry Quarterly Review. Aside from writing, reading and teaching, Andrew spends his time hiking and brewing beer.