Dead Language Lesson by A.E. Stallings

They life their half-closed eyes out of the grammar.

What is the object of love ? You,
Singular. The subject? I.

Aeneas has nothing to say for himself.
Even the boys confess that he
Didn’t intend to come back, the girls
Already know the tale by heart.

They wheedle me for tangents, for
Anything not in a book,
Even though it’s all from books:
The many-wiled Penelope,
Orpheus struck dumb with hindsight.

I confiscate a note in which
The author writes, “who do you love”?–
An agony past all correction.

I think, as they wait for the bell,
Blessed are the young for whom
All languages are dead: the girl
Who twines her golden hair, like Circe,
Turning glib boys into swine.