Arms folded, wearing tiger masks,
students sit. Questions? No one asks.
Loss and grief, exile, return:
how much of it can they take in?
The Iliad: to go to war.
The Odyssey: and come back home.
Epic’s relentless forward motion,
lyric’s gossamer attention,
adventure parsed as allegory,
the iterations of the story,
and then to choose the right translation
for a fearful generation.
May poetry keep finding ways
of piercing the miasmal haze
and reclaiming a clear space
behind each young and guarded face
and washing through the walls that hide
whatever’s bubbling inside.