Heraclitus of Halicarnassus
(after William Johnson Cory, after Callimachus)
they told me Heraclitus you were dead
they told me this was something that they’d read
they told me you were clearly off your head
since someone found you hanging in the shed
they added that the nightingales had fled
which was a lie, like every word they said
Published by W N Herbert
Poet and pseudo-scholar W.N. Herbert was born in Dundee in 1961, educated there and at Oxford, where he completed his DPhil thesis on Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and now lives and works in Newcastle. He is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and his books are published by, among others, northern publisher Bloodaxe Books. He is also the Dundee Makar, or city laureate.
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The Gude & Godlie Ballatis Project 