Miserable Title

by Len Krisak (December 2014)

There had been signs, if only we had known.

A man said we were dining all alone.

The papers shrank from news not fit to print.

Oh yes, the papers shrank. Who took the hint?

All letters stopped; what had their words been for?

Our pen pals failed to reach us any more.

The young had all advanced to God-knows-what,

And every proven door we tried was shut.

No emails graced our screens, though we would look;

We’d entered on the death throes of The Book.

It was a pretty plight to which we’d come,

This cul-de-sac there’s no escaping from.

Still, on we worked, and waited for . . .  who knew?

It was the very least that we could do.

________________

Len Krisak has published in The London Magazine, The Oxonian Review, PN Review, Standpoint, Agni, The Antioch Review, The Sewanee Review, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Agenda, The Hopkins Review, Commonweal, Literary Imagination, The Oxford Book of Poems on Classical Mythology, and others. His latest book is Virgil’s Eclogues, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Forthcoming: The Carmina of Catullus, Carcanet Press, 2015, Afterimage, Measure Press, 2014, Rilke: New Poems, Boydell & Brewer, 2015 and Ovid: The Amores and The Ars Amatoria, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

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