Piraeus Archaeological Museum
 
On the journey to the mundane afterlife, 
You travel equipped to carry on your trade: 
A bronze, small-toothed saw to make repairs, 
The stylus and the inkpot and the scraper, 
Wax tablets bound into a little book. 

Here is the tortoise shell for the kithara,
Bored through with holes for strings, natural sound box. 
Here is the harp’s wood triangle, all empty—
The sheep gut having long since de-composed

Into a pure Pythagorean music. 

The beeswax, frangible with centuries,
Has puzzled all your lyrics into silence.
I think you were a poet of perfection
Who fled still weighing one word with another, 
Since wax forgives and warms beneath revision.