A Greek Island by Edward Hirsch

A Greek Island 

by Edward Hirsch 

Traveling over your body I found

The failing olive and the cajoling flute,

Where I knelt down, as if in prayer,

And sucked a moist pit 

From the marl

Of the earth in a sacred cove.

You gave yourself to the god who comes,

The liberator of the loud shout, 

While I fell into a trance, 

Blood on my lips,

And stumbled into a temple on top

Of a hill at the bottom of the sky.

About this Poem:

"The poem takes a phrase ('C'est l'olive pâmée, et la flûte câline') from an obscene parody of Albert Mérat by Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine ('Sonnet du trou du cul') and develops it into an erotic poem.  Now the body of the body becomes a sacred site, a Greek island."

--Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch is the author of numerous collections of poetry including, The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems(Knopf, 2011). Hirsch is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.