Our Ancestors Are the Stories We Tell

While we await our Sybil and she denies us entrance

Demanding the bough of a tree which in our youth

Cried out to us—the one of many looked upon—

And when received she shows us in

Anchises lures us with the dream we dream at dawn

Though he was sworn to secrecy, he welcomes us

Without the consent of Venus

And our father tells us nothing

Nothing of Dido—the one of many undone—

And the end of his youth entered into through a horn

Not the portal of ivory we were promised

O Grandfather, you hear our cries and leave us

Storyless

Sharon Portnoff

Sharon Portnoff holds the Elie Wiesel Chair in Judaic Studies and is associate professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College. Her poems have appeared in Midstream, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Poetry Porch, and the collection Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi, ed. Irina Dumitrescu (Punctum, 2016). Poems are forthcoming in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly and Moment.