The Look Back

When Orpheus and his Eurydice

walked up from the underworld, they thought

of the light up there, how beautiful it was,

how much they longed for, needed it;

but even so, they’d been a long time

in the dark, too long. They’d learned it needed them.

*

From “Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths” edited by Nina Kossman (Oxford University Press: 296 pp., $27.50)