I wrote this poem one morning while seated at the desk of the late poet James Merrill in Stonington, Connecticut, where I had been generously granted a fellowship that allowed me to live and work in what had been Merrill's house. I had been reading the poems of C.D. Wright who had died suddenly and unexpectedly, and whom I had known and whose work I esteem. I was struck by the way these two poets were somehow alive to me there, in that house--their voices in my head, their poems so vivid and indicative of their fine minds and sensibilities that it seemed absurd to me that they weren't actually alive. This poem is written in a voice I think of as posthumous and it imagines the speaker as being gone, but still capable of recollection, still holding onto memory. It is also based on Wright's marvelous poem "Our Dust."
"[I]ntellectuals and literature enthusiasts will now be able to know the power of the work of the great poet Elytis in a place in Plaka, Athens, designed specifically for the poet and dedicated to his personality, life and the valuable national legacy with which he enriched the whole of Greece.”
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"But Zewdu’s poem is all about lightness and wit: he mixes 12 syllable yewel bet lines with 6 syllable half-lines, making the poem very light and quick on its feet; he subverts the traditional aabb rhyme scheme and keeps readers a bit off-balance with a/bb/ccc/d/ee. So the task of translating this poem is to convey Zewdu’s clear message while staying true to his wit and lightness."
