Juvenalia Ii Poem by Morgan Michaels

Some, like tranlations by Katherine Anne Porter,
ballades of ladies of times long by-gone-
'ou est Flora, la belle Romaine,
'dites moi'? N'en quell pays'?
in antediluvian type, dated, set in order;

some like Holderlin, the incomparable,
against whose head the hills rolled and burst like breakers,
and many another maker:
eager fakers, all, and showing the wages
of imitation mostly yellow pages.

Out wiggle-slips
a flattened rose. I sigh, press it to my lips
sliding closed the drawer on all that long-ago
but not before a moth ball, ghostly pale, bounces,
echoing in timely fashion, down the stair

insisting there was a time (hello)
pre-film, pre-TV, pre-PC
when people dreamed that form, folly, oh,
might make a message musical and clearer.
And so it often did.