On an Old Man of Verona Who Never Left His Farm

Translation

After Claudian

Lucky old man who spends his days among fields he owns,
whose boyhood house is roof to his gray hairs,
who leaning with cane on the soil of his first footsteps
looks on farmland the long years have not changed.
No unforeseen misfortunes stormed his head with sorrow.
He never tasted the river Far-From-Home.
No merchant, no soldier to quake at breakers, at the trumpet,
no plaintiff buffeted in the raucous forum.
Guiltless of the world, even of his neighboring towns,
he searches the sky’s blue with a carefree eye.
Names of crops, not of consuls, are his calendar:
autumn is apple-picking, spring opening flowers.
His same fields daily send up and receive the sun.
Each day hourly provides its routine chores.
That tall oak, he tells, was an acorn in his pocket.
That orchard, he says, and he grew up together.
Verona? It might be farther off than sunbaked India.
Lake Garda? I might be talking of the Red Sea.
Yet his handshake is firm and friendly; his grandchildren
hang on his muscled arms like two stout boughs.
Trudge, restless traveler, to the sea cliffs of remote Iberia.
You journey, seeking life. He, tending his hearth, found it.

Translation © Carey Jobe

Carey Jobe is a retired attorney and judge who has published poetry over a 45-year span. His work has recently appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, Sparks of Calliope, and The Society of Classical Poets. He has authored a volume of poetry, By River or Gravel Road, and is currently working on a second collection. He lives and writes in the lush landscape south of Tallahassee, Florida.

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