The Flaying of Marsyas

THE FLAYING OF MARSYAS / James McCorkle Someone always arrives, bringing new emblems We must learn before it's too late, When cities encroach upon the summer With their brown mazed air, crisp with flies and captives From southern islands and warm archipelagos. When we live long enough, boasts turn to stories Told in passing, the only feature we are sure of From the past, a brief wind through the pines We always find there, markers of our childhoods Or a golden age less remarked upon now Or with misplaced nostalgia, forgetting The dogs still at bay, while others carry away What we thought was important. There is little time Left after all, for the evening or one last song, Chairs stacked on tables, the Ughts go out, Cards tapped neatly back to order. In the distance someone waves goodnight To a window's yellow light, stippled with moths. After singing all afternoon on a tenement's stoop The accordionist's voice has gone hoarse, the sunlight thinned, Hydrants' pressure relaxes to slow streams Carrying the heat downriver, under the iron bridges, Out to sea, past the burning islands and warm ruins, The blistered dolphins diving past the fathoms Of blue and crenellations to mud. And In the pine groves the skins fill with the brief wind 222 · The Missouri Review Of summer, the distant waterfalls the only feature We are sure of in the background, what is lost Is always greater, we dream it waits on the other side Covered with moths. And in the pine groves Someone arrives, the old songs staining his mouth, The tune set again in the stars. James McCorkle The Missouri Review · 223 ...