So now what have you to say Anchises

Nothing I can understand it I have carried you so long so deep

Into the underworld that I am surely dead as you

And yet the plague is following to perpetuate the crisis

Let me set you down and sit beside you now dear ghost

And while we wait I’ll write another page

For all the spars and tackle that the sea has swallowed

For all the names of men and cities we have lost

For Carthage for the queen betrayed this heat this chill,

And the incomprehensible instructions we have followed

To the letter Is this it That we have crossed the blood-dark seas

To sit down with the dead at last at our infected ease

I used to think there was a point you meant to make

By revelation or by anecdote or by sayings dark with meaning

But you could not articulate the thing you had in mind

And maybe that was it that in the end

There is really no such thing as higher learning

Strive and seek oh all of that but what is there to find

Except the fact the dead are dead is not enough

And though we are in Hell the cities go on burning

Sean O’Brien is a poet, critic and playwright who lives in Newcastle. His latest collection It Says Here is published by Picador in May. 21st-century Poetry is edited by Andy Croft, email [email protected]