Poem – PENULTIMATE (By John Stanizzi)

PENULTIMATE

for David Ferry (July, 21, 2015)

At 91, David tells me that he

is nearly finished with his Aeneid

translation and that he has started his

next book which he has tentatively called

Underworld, and he is already three

poems in, and when the Aeneid goes to

press he’ll focus more on this newest book,

but not right now — right now he is a slave

to Aeneas’s fearlessness and his

capacity for love in the face of

unspeakable grief, which Aeneas knew

right from the start was inevitable.

Maybe that’s what drew David to this piece —

the love that drove the journey, and the loss.