Classics

Ode to Thalia Howe

By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 15, 2015

Classics

Arma virumque cano
Troiae qui primus ab ori
In media res
The epic hero
Aeneas escaped from Troy
Vergil’s Latin version
Of Homer’s Odyssey
It took a year
At Boston Latin School
Told not to read
Dido and Aeneas
In the cave
Only Latin boys ever
Translate voluntarily
Other than
Winnie Ille Pu
Why bother
Learning a dead language
Can we speak it
I asked as a
Sixie tackling
Richie’s First Steps
Amo Amas Amat
Six grueling years
Now gone
But for syntax
Invention of language
Tool kit for writing
French and German
As well
Insane homework
Weekly tests
Flunked most
While teens
Other cool kids
Dated and played
Then Freshman Humanities
The Great Books
Read the Iliad
Three times
That first semester
No Cliff Notes
For C+ Earle
World’s most boring professor
Those magnificent works
Taught by utter mediocrity
Two semesters
He was OK for
Canterbury Tales
Recited to us
In Olde English
His field
Terrible for Dante
Made a mess of Cervantes
Sophomore year elective
Classical literature
Thalia Howe
Stunning Greek wife of
The famous Irving
Among the leftist dissidents
Remarkable black balled faculty
Brandeis during
The McCarthy years
Perched on a desk
Smartly dressed
She enchanted us
Plunged into the Odyssey
T. E. Shaw's translation
A.K.A. Lawrence of Arabia
More lively than
Latimore’s frigid Iliad
Those adventures
Still vivid
The Oresteia and Oedipus Rex
Aristotle’s Poetics
Theories of tragedy
Within a single day
Poetry of Sappho
Hilarious Lysistrata
Never cut class
Mad crush on Thalia
Loved her as
Much as the Greeks
Those classical ideals
Shaping this
Total Gonzo poetry
Decades on
Isn’t that odd