Violet days: not quite a season

"I am here. I will always succour you,"
he used to say, a little full of himself.
What did I know? I was just a boy
loved by Apollo. There had been others.

All I wanted was to ride my deer,

who made me feel some knowledge of myself,

letting me string his big antlers with violets.

One day, in a covert, not seeing the deer
stray to drink at a cool spring, I thrust
my spear inadvertently into him.


Not even Apollo could stop the grief,
which gave me a greenish tint, twisting my
forehead upward; I became a cypress.
Poor Apollo: nothing he loves can live.










Henri Cole
Pierce the Skin
  Selected Poems, 1982-2007
    From Apollo, xiii
      The Visible Man 
      1998
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010©


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