What tales we tell what tales What ails?
About the girls gone quiet Yet
The story-telling ones once
Who entertained the heart art
Till suddenly they ceased. eased
What makes the tongue inert? hurt.
What turns the voice to swords Words,
Cutting the throat? What takes aches,
The name from the alibi I
A. E. Stallings is an American poet who has lived in Greece since 1999. She has recently published a new verse translation of Hesiod’s Works and Days (Penguin Classics), and a new collection of poetry, Like (with FSG).