Fragments from an unknown epic poem

Presented here are the surviving thirteen fragments from an unknown epic poem in at least six books, plus four fragments of what is for metrical reasons a clearly different text and may be from a commentary that has become confused with the epic in the manuscript tradition. Although the structure and content cannot be known completely, the surviving material suggests that a model was at least the first six books of Virgil's Aeneid (c. 19 BCE). The fragments have been arranged with that model in mind, while their original ordering in the manuscript is indicated via bracketed numbers.

The title and the author of the poem are unknown. Internal references suggest a date in the late 20th- or early-21st-century, although somewhat earlier or later cannot be excluded.

attributable to Book 1 [1]

 … the edge in their quickening smells of native sage and skin

in the dark as it cools, the tap of her second-hand heels like the color

of oiling a hide, of counting down the remaining time,

the straps of her bra showing through like ink in a practiced hand,

the margins ribboning black on the flawless book of her back,

the pages the pale white curves of her shoulders and blades, her eyes

and their almost glower -- he reads -- how they crinkle and narrow with laughter

and mean, she is laughing now …

attributable to Book 2 [3]

 … a night in the long-ago South, this night

in the West, the feeling that a drive will eventually end, and with it

the feeling of her fingers curving over his shoulders from behind, he keeps

both hands on the wheel, his eyes on the rearview mirror, he tries

not to angle it down as he drives. "I think you're cute, professor."

(He is not a professor; it's what she likes to ...

attributable to Book 2 [5]

 … her lover and the man had gone back, her partner,

they had left already then circled around, they had fallen, and the women --

both blonde, they had bonded while lying improbably together on the floor

underneath the dining-room table, shielded from the light and aglow,

both at that moment like honey when the sun is first let into the comb.

Only who is the honey, with its collagen flow, its gloss and gleam

like a moan in the vulpine, cornering glean of the sun? And who

the firm and pliant chambers of the comb? …

attributable to Book 4, of some uncertainty in ordering relative to each other [8]

[8a] He walked her home, after bad but earnest blues music, middle-aged,

and flavorless beer, and even there she had gotten herself

gently stoned. They were perfectly arm in arm, just the right heights,

and to passing cars she called out "Chivalry!" It was the middle of the night.

[8b] Later, while he brushed his teeth in the kitchen, her flaxen hair

in the chrome and silvery dark: she had done it up loosely with long black

pins, and strands curved down to those curving shoulders of hers.

He traced them with his …

[8c] He watches her wash the concert blush from her face and the green,

that cometous green, from under the slate rainshower of her eyes.

attributable to Book 4, but possibly corrupted by marginalia, as the diction does not completely match that of other fragments; it is not certain whether all or part of this passage is direct speech [7]

 … it's bones, eye-sockets, it's the way it would fit,

and the delicate rhythm of ears, their shadows, as hair is brushed back

like a kiss [plucked up by the roots], only once, just once and again,

one's way, it's a loss of one's way to the tick of the clock of her second-hand

heels, those too-swift boots, her strut, he is looking -- he knows

he should not be looking -- at the curve of her <butt> in fashionable black,

he is looking at the round of her <ass>, and now not a [snatch] of any hair

but a kiss, just one, only once, her … dusky like smoke,

 … her skin … powdered

attributable to Book 6 [2]

 … and gesturing now with his hands to show branchings of possible lives --

he is sketching the four dimensions in three -- he is sealing their corner

away from the raucous air quietly; the table in-laid

with jostling tiles and glazed with ice mopped only haphazardly

up from the frozen margarita she spilled, as the one tilts further

away from the other: not the two, they lean closer together like lovers:

two …

attributable to Book 6 [8d: in the manuscript, immediately after [8c], but more likely a reflection in book 6 on an episode not completely narrated in book 4]

" … how short you seemed, next to me, in your white undershirt, your white

unbooted feet. How small. And sudden the thought came to me

that here we could be as if already old: after years had passed

but not taken any four copper coins as their toll; as if we had somehow

managed to hold on to something of a life as it rose like a dream,

rose, as they say, through one or the other of the gates of ivory

and bone, looking up and seeing light. With a groan it breathed itself

away. We had never even kissed. It was as if we had managed to miss

all the usual paltry aggressions and fears, those few minutes only

alone in the noise of a few dingy bars over so many years,

a few minutes only in rented cars and a van, one night, after you had made a point

of singing off-mic, and one morning after that had stretched into early

afternoon, while we shared a catfish lunch (we had both been slightly

drunk and had no taste for … "

attributable to Book 6, evidently near to his final words to her [9]

[9a] "I repeat myself in case -- it is not a hope: in the properly futureless feeling,

a sideways motion like sharing that drink from the faucet after brushing,

when our heads had to turn so far on their sides -- I can see you remembering --

that our glasses fell in, both of us laughing and seeing what could,

had it all only been otherwise, have been such a lovely quiet

and life. You won't face me. But I can see you tracing, in your mind,

the tracks of that ancient flame. I repeat myself from far back,

from far enough back: the right moment, that might … and its backwards

motion and drive, its backwards curve, in my mind I reach back

for your fingers curving over my shoulder from behind. … "

[9b] "At [the time], I kept both hands on the wheel."

[9c] "I offer to carry your bags, I can see … you refuse"

[9d] "In my [dreams] I keep both hands on … "

Commentary [4: the reference to 'this poem' and what seems to be a quotation, albeit from a section lost to us, would seem to make this identification certain]

[4a] … this poem the momentum imparted by life,

this life as it leaves, that drive as it drops

her off at her hotel, that curve -- "No, really:

those curves" -- as it gains in speed as it always …

[4b] … turning so straightly away. Now only

in the mind ...

Commentary? [10: the level diction and clarity of syntax would seem to make this identification rather certain, despite the metaphor]

Whether or not we have had to leave

Creusa behind, we stand to run

aground on Dido's shores and leave

again.

Commentary? [6: whether this is the poet's or the commentator's is impossible to decide, despite the difference in meter; if the poet's, it is possible that this belongs to a different poem, although it develops a related image of a similar theme]

 … and it's not the hair like bales in springtime

sun, it is not so long, this is no

fairy tale, that urges to try

to climb away from an evident life:

like a bowl its sides are thinner than air

and slower-than-lightly curving, light

as the lives we might have lived flash, gloss

in the table, lens flare, and loss of childhood

fables away …