Poetry Porch: Poetry

 

A COUNTRY BOY GOES TO ROME
by Richard Moore


Called simply, “Titus,” not yet famed—
not as in Rome, where each free man
destined to rule the world was named
also by family and clan—

so, with the comedies he wrought us,
he took the name, official frowns
withstanding, Titus Maccius Plautus,
“Titus Flatfoot, Clan of Clowns.”

 

Copyright © 2005 by Richard Moore. This poem appears in Moore’s recent book of poems, Sailing to Oblivion, Chicago: Light Quarterly Imprints, 2005. It was first published in The Classical Outlook. 

 
 

THE COMFORT OF THE CLASSICS
by Richard Moore


When one has ceased to find one’s wife
lovable, when she snarls, hates life;
and when their house becomes a hearse
unsuitable for song or verse,
full of foreboding and deep dread
and the lost screams of the undead,
then get the fateful book out, pal.
It’s time to reread Juvenal.

 

Copyright © 2005 by Richard Moore. This poem appears in Moore’s recent book of poems, Sailing to Oblivion, Chicago: Light Quarterly Imprints, 2005. It was first published in The Classical Outlook. 

 
 

GOOD RIDDANCE
by Richard Moore


They were so talented . . . those ancient Greeks,
       dammit, were freaks.
To these United States, were you to haul them,
       poets would call them
egotists, monsters, and, yet more emphatic,
       undemocratic.

Cutthroat-competitive, into our “free
       society”
they were too tough, too honest, too hard-bit 
       ever to fit.
Be glad then. Those weirdos (we love ’em so!)
       died long ago.

 

Copyright © 2005 by Richard Moore. This poem appears in Moore’s recent book of poems, Sailing to Oblivion, Chicago: Light Quarterly Imprints, 2005. It was first published in The Classical Outlook.

 
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