Sarah Lindsay Poems

Themiscyra, 72 BC

While Lucullus raided cherry orchards,
he left us to besiege,
grudgingly, this outlander fortress,
...

Krakatau split with a blinding noise
and raised from gutted, steaming rock
a pulverized black sky, over water walls
that swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra.
...

A sound of far-off thunder from instruments
ten feet away: drums, a log,
a gong of salvage metal. Chimes
...

The dog came back,
grinning and smelling of carrion,
and her husband behind it, stride and gestures
too large for the house. His field voice, cracking,
...

From the Mithridatic Wars,  first century BC

Our general was elsewhere, but we drowned.
While he rested, he shipped us home
...

When bones and flesh have finished their business together,
we lay them carefully, in positions they're willing to keep,
and cover them over.
Their eyes and ours won't meet anymore. We hope.
...

She's slicing ripe white peaches
into the Tony the Tiger bowl
and dropping slivers for the dog
poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall
...

For RLB

Pass by the showy rose,
blabbing open,
suckling a shiny beetle;
...

They have left behind the established cave
with its well-worn floor. Scholarship impels them
in hundreds, but generally one by one,
...

Of Mina-sarpilili-anda II,
the only surviving record
is this splendid bas-relief in which
he presses the neck of his Hittite foe
...