Only Poetry Lasts

Roman Bathhouse Ruins,
Varna, Bulgaria

POETRY READING AT THE
VARNA RUINS
—John Balaban

The wind skips in from the sea

stirring poplar catkins, wooly stuff

drifting the town in flurries,

nestling like words, like poems,

as we sit in these ancient baths, listening

to poetry, the delicate thing which lasts.

Look at these ruins. Boys, silly with love,

chatted idly by the pools. Merchants, 

trading amphorae of oil and Lydian dye,

muttered about profits, seas, lost ships.

Now seagulls flap and squawk

on broken walls scurfed with weeds,

with weeds and the royal poppy.

Thracian, Greek, Roman, Bulgar, Slav, 

Goths, Avars, Celts, Tatars, Huns.

Only poetry lasts.

The walls crumble: Horace endures.

And Ovid saves himself from exile

where history blows off the sea

scattering catkins through rubble of empires.

_______________________

—Medusa