Epistulae 4.14

Haec tibi mittuntur, quem sum modo carmine questus
non aptum numeris nomen habere meis

Tuticanus
– what a name!
I can’t think what to say to you except

get me out of here
anything would be better
Mt Purgatory

Guantanamo Bay
Iraq
the locals have got tired

of hearing me complain
yes once again
my work’s got me in trouble

& once again
I’m innocent
I like them

I just hate the place we’re in
admittedly I moan about the cold
the sieges

gunfights
gangmembers
but never a word against

my gentle hosts
they won’t let me pay taxes
call me their poet

far kinder
than you people
if only they lived further

from the pole

Epistulae 4.10

Ecquos tu silices, ecquod, carissime, ferrum
duritiae confers, Albinouane, meae?

This is my sixth
summer
Albovinanus

who’d have guessed
I’d last here
for so long?

water
carves out stone
fingers

wear gold rings
to ribbons
given time

but I’m untouched
a leafless land
that only grows

barbed wire
where rafts turn into
footpaths

on the sea

Epistulae 4.7

Johann Heinrich Schönfeld: Scythians at the Tomb of Ovid (1640)

Vincitur Aegisos testataque tempus in omne
sunt tua, Vestalis, carmine facta meo.

Vestalis
you’ve been posted here yourself
to the land of the midnight sun

to police the Hyperboreans
below the pole
you know that I’m not lying

you can see the ice
the frozen bottles
bikies

racing their hogs
along the floes
you’ve seen the poisoned nunchucks

had to fight yourself
when the stockade was attacked
(your deeds will live forever

in my verse)

Epistulae 1.2

Qui, mortis saeuo geminent ut uulnere causas,
omnia uipereo spicula felle linunt.

Maximus
why am I writing you?
you’ll throw away the letter

when you see my name
up here
the locals smear their blades

with poison
to up the chances
of a fatal wound

circling the walls like wolves
the rooftops gleam
with last year’s crop of shrapnel

as my fourth winter
stretches into spring
no rest for me

even in dreams
I’m riddled
like a target

sweating on the chaingang
or worst of all
I dream I’m

safe at home