Kirchwey, Karl

United States, (b. 1956)

Propofol

  1. Moly, mandragora, milk of oblivion:
  2. I said to Doctor Day, “You bring on night.”
  3. “But then,” he said, “I bring day back again,”
  4. and smiled; except his smile was thin and slight.
  5.  
  6. I said to him, “Sleep and Death were brothers,
  7. you know. They carry off great Troy’s Sarpedon
  8. in Euphronios’ famous calyx-krater”—
  9. babbling. He said, “I am a singleton.”
  10.  
  11. I said to him, “The Romans would have called you
  12. Somnus, the Greeks Hypnos or Morpheus”
  13. (but Doctor Day looked blank), anything to
  14. forestall the wasp (Classics not his thing, I guess)
  15.  
  16. alighting on the back of my right hand.
  17. He said to me, “Tell me why you are here.”
  18. I said, “To lose a page, I understand,
  19. out of the Book of Life.” A traveller
  20.  
  21. approached the citadel even while I was speaking,
  22. seven seconds from my brain: then it was snuff.
  23. Pornokrates, naked in her black stockings,
  24. led one more pig on a leash to the trough.

© Karl Kirchwey. “Propofol”.The New Yorker. 30 June, 2008.

About the Poet:

Karl Kirchwey, United States, (b. 1956) is a poet, translator, book reviewer, educator in creative writing, translator, literary curator and advocate for writers and writing. His work is strongly influenced by the Greek and Roman past. He often looks to the classical world for inspiration with themes which have included loss, loneliness, nostalgia and modern atrocities, and how the past relates to the present.

He was the director of the 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center from 1987 to 2000 and the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at American Academy in Rome. He has taught at Columbia, Yale, Wesleyan, Smith College, and Bryn Mawr College, where he received the Rosalind Schwartz Teaching Award. He currently teaches at Boston University. [DES-10/19]

From the Porkopolis Archive:

  • Félicien Rops – Pornokrates or “La Dame au cochon”