Desires you nursed of a winter night

                                   by A. E. Stallings

Actaeon

The hounds, you know them all by name.
You fostered them from purblind whelps
At their dam’s teats, and you have come
To know the music of their yelps:

High-strung Anthee, the brindled bitch,
The blue-tick coated Philomel,
And freckled Chloe, who would fetch
A pretty price if you would sell—

All fleet of foot, and swift to scent,
Inexorable once on the track,
Like angry words you might have meant,
But do not mean, and can’t take back.

There was a time when you would brag
How they would bay and rend apart
The hopeless belling from a stag.
You falter now for the foundered hart.

Desires you nursed of a winter night —
Did you know then why you bred them—
Whose needling milk-teeth used to biteThe master’s hand that leashed and fed them?

A. E. Stallings, “Actaeon” from Hapax. 2006,

Nothing is more permanent than the temporary

                                                    by A. E. Stallings

             After a Greek Proverb             Ουδέν μονιμότερον του προσωρινού       

We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query—

Just for a couple of years, we said, a dozen years back.

Nothing is more permanent than the temporary.

We dine sitting on folding chairs—they were cheap but cheery.

We’ve taped the broken window pane. TV’s still out of whack.

We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query.

When we crossed the water, we only brought what we could carry,

But there are always boxes that you never do unpack.

Nothing is more permanent than the temporary.

Sometimes when I’m feeling weepy, you propose a theory:

Nostalgia and tear gas have the same acrid smack.

We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query—

We stash bones in the closet when we don’t have time to bury,

Stuff receipts in envelopes, file papers in a stack.

Nothing is more permanent than the temporary.

Twelve years now and we’re still eating off the ordinary:

We left our wedding china behind, afraid that it might crack.

We’re here for the time being, we answer to the query,

But nothing is more permanent than the temporary.

              Poetry (January 2012).