another year

in foreign lands, they may already dream
of stallions cloaked in velvet soft as night
and crepe-draped walls which will not let her light
drown out their hoofbeat-prayers on orphean themes.
in such lands, they imagine tides which scheme
to break apart her mainmast like a blight
and leave small waves to carry out their rite
across the seas and firths and far upstream.
but here, none dares to picture such decay
who knows that centuries are flashes which,
in her long memory, fill but a line
and nothing more. here grief in youth’s midday
is never born; instead, the bards enrich
their verse with autumns no spring can outshine.

***

Maggie Wang is an undergraduate at the University of Oxford. Her writing has appeared in K’in, the Alexandria Quarterly, and Ruminate, among others, and is forthcoming in Shards and Nightingale & Sparrow. She has also won awards from the Poetry Society and the Folger Shakespeare Library. When not writing, she enjoys playing the piano and exploring nature.