This work by Brooklyn-born poet, playwright, and translator Edwin Honig, which appeared in our Fall 1978 issue, spoke to me right away. In a time of war, it’s impossible to not think of the soldiers being used as proverbial—and literal—cannon fodder and of the lives they leave behind. Honig himself served during World War II before devoting his life to literary pursuits. In this poem, we see the beds left empty by a draft, a statue of the handsome god of the sun of Grecian lore standing tall in the empty town, his cold red lips “wet with the spit / of abandoned wives.” The closing tercet is heartbreaking and erotic, two words that very much describe the poem. It invites us to think: What lovers are separated by war? How long do the sheets stay warm after they’re gone, victims of the front lines? How many couples are suffering similar fates right now, just across the pond?
Apollo in the Defeated Town
(on some lines by Yannos Ritsos)
Edwin Honig
1
The statue's red lips
drip with the spit
of abandoned wives.
Yesterday they curled up
in beds where
the foreign soldier slept
sheets still warm
from those bodies
marching off this morning.
2
Today some dead men passed
draped over wheelbarrows
one preposterously handsome
as if pledged to love
and the women ran after
dresses immodestly torn
hair flying in the wind
grazing the wheelbarrow
all the way to the grave:
3
On the roadside some fell
into the thorny rosebushes
blowing in the sea air.
Having stopped using make-up
their full mouths droop
their black eyes squint
and beauty rises
menacing as a wave
that will never drop.
