HADRIANOPOLIS

"All metaphors find their sense"
M.Yourcenar, Hadrian's Memoirs

As I try, this eighth month of
this year, MCMLXXX,
to begin with dignity this letter to you
I unbutton my soul like a tunic
and I fling your tent open

between the second and twentieth century
the cut is deep and hot enough
for light to refract and reflect
in order to shape your profile more clearly
even though nothing might explain us:

not the empire, not the memoirs,
not the city I built with a careless thought
- just one more city in Hellada, and the beloved one
who couldn't distinguish freedom from power
not even Latio, nor the coins minted
with the godlike face of Antinous, will explain us
Humanitas Felicitas Libertas
No, not even your library restored
bit by bit in the world
and certainly not your adversaries, not even women

not even death and the passing of your contemporaries
not the horse nor the sign of the sky
the cat the colour of desert, honey and sun
(as Yourcenar would have it)
not even journeys and prophecies
no, no, no, you're right to doubt
death, when you surrender
your Reason
to Touch, Beauty, Pleasure

because, moving the borders
of blood, flesh, idea
you are passing on life
from one metaphor to another
you have extended it so bountifully
it's here for us too.

Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott

© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
All rights reserved.