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Ned Balbo
Robert
Frost once said that the perfect education was classical and in
the same breath, the poet alluded to the education he received at Lawrence High School replete with
history, classical learning, and lore. The classical myths
continue to provide a firm grounding for today's poetry. Ned Balbo
uses classical lore to develop his own unique poem of voices-- a form that Frost
used often as his narrative
vehicle. Beneath the surface of Balbo's language, one finds some
innovations and expansions of Frost's use of the form.
ARISTAEUS
FORGIVEN
Eurydice died...
That’s where it often begins,
but remember how she died, the adder’s bite
as she fled headlong from the lecherous
Aristaeus,
the cause of it all, or, less clear-cut than that,
mixed up somehow in the causes, part of them...
--Virgil, Georgics, IV, David R. Slavitt, translator
I’d watched Eurydice, bees
edging near
The bouquet as she reached
out, shooed them off
And stepped back, laughing,
steadied by her bridesmaids,
Meadow in bloom, fierce
humming underfoot
And overhead, snake unseen
till it struck
--Such grief. Was I the cause?
Desire repressed,
I’d watched her from a grove
but stood revealed
Only when it was too late,
angry swarm
Confusing everyone, those
panicked women,
Spirits of wood and water,
shrieking out
Despair and accusations as I
fled--
Could they be right? I
wondered: had I called
The bees to act as I could
not, an impulse
Toward destruction--tear
the veil away--
Still unacknowledged as I rose
to witness--
Cause the tragedy? And when my
bees,
Queenless themselves, mere
husks, were dying off
In waves, I should have known
my luck had turned
Against me for good reason:
secretly,
The angry women watched,
waiting their turn,
A grief for a grief, while
time and fortune brought
Vengeance against the
uninvited guest,
Bridesmaids-in-mourning loyal
to the end...
What had I done, or not done?
I’d forgotten,
Or fought back the thought,
till Proteus
Reminded me. I flinched, but
let him speak,
Tale garbled in the telling
and retelling,
As I heard the rites that
would appease
Mistaken enemies, though in my
rage
I’m sure in time I would
have sought the bulls
And heifers anyway,
slaughtered them all,
And left them gutted
somewhere, fury quenched
And vision darkened....So
this is forgiveness,
I thought bitterly before the
altar,
Newly purified....
But when I placed
My hand inside the carcass
where new bees
Had gathered in the wound, and
felt the nectar
Oozing at my touch, I had to
laugh
At such grotesque fulfillment
of my prayers,
False respite, restoration
that meant less
Than full forgiveness. No, my
guilt would last
As long as flesh--grief,
too--and more would follow
In the years to come, stung
hand recoiling,
Sticky with gold, defiled, a
bridesmaid’s laughter
Almost audible, sun streaming
down
On bloodied altar, carcass,
living bees
And empty meadow, all the
years ahead.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Note: Aristaeus Forgiven draws
on David R. Slavitt’s translation of Georgica IV in Eclogues
& Georgics of Virgil (Johns Hopkins, 1990). Bulfinch’s Mythology (Random House) includes this summary of
Proteus’ words to Aristaeus: “You receive the merited award of your
deeds, by which Eurydice met her death, for in flying from you she trod
upon a serpent, of whose bite she died. To avenge her death, the nymphs,
her companions, have sent this destruction to your bees. You have to
appease their anger....”
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Ned Balbo's collection,
GALILEO'S BANQUET, received the 1998 Towson University Prize for Literature. In 2003 he received the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award and, in 2002, the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. Four times a Pushcart Prize nominee in poetry or nonfiction, he was recently Walter E. Dakin fellow in poetry at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and a poetry fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His poems have appeared in Antioch Review, American Poetry Review, Italian Americana, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere, and his reviews of current poetry and prose appear regularly in Antioch Review and Pleiades.
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