I am blind and burnt.
An old man taught me home’s forgetting,
murderous seducer left me lost,
took the last path I knew
drained past parents piety.
I watched him mix them with hemlock
saying follow me as his legs went cold.
Some strange immortality closed his eyes
as he gave my hopes to Hades.
More than all I loved him, I loved
his insistent dying, his selfish folly
his lips when they swayed me to his side.
But I am dying unkissed in darkness
worse than Lethe he called truth—
I would settle now
for a flash of Aegean sun.
—Samuel Loncar
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