Evening Graves
Nathan Manley
The dead rest like winter insects, Maro.
Honeycombed, their hollow countries hold no
secret sweetnesses. Here, even railcars
lapse vacant in the briar, summer-sparse
up the Merrimack, like rusted blood cells.
Thus the apiarist who wakes in hell
and plumbs the subtle throats of flowers there,
lights tongue on chrome, bright gasoline-bent air,
and loses his name. Here, the lichened stones
shed letters. Here, a savage rain is blown
from paradise.
How pronounce them, Maro?
Figuras earum didicero
before the porchlight hales me and night brims
over the dripping trees. This churchyard swims
with lamplight, our city’s slow mosaic
of blinking rooms—grand, if now archaic
arguments against the dark. Bright machines
are breathing in hell, all Freon and spleen,
the houses gone hive-quiet: ave atque
ave atque.
I have no word by way
of parting, and love the unlovely
world too selfishly. When dusk, sun-honeyed,
dips and bids the ancient railway pursue
its vanished country—Maro, I miss you.
Figūrās eārum didicerō: “I will have learned their shapes.”
Nathan Manley is a writer and erstwhile English teacher from Loveland, Colorado. He is the author of two chapbooks, *Numina Loci* (Mighty Rogue Press, 2018) and *Ecology of the Afterlife *(Split Rock Press, 2021). Recent poems and Latin translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Portland Review, Natural Bridge, The Classical Outlook and others. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. You can find his writing and instrumental music at nathanmmanley.com