Friday, May 1, 2026

The Stranger's Tombstone

by Brett Rutherford

     After Theocritus

I did not live out my days.
Too young I died, among Greeks
who scorned my Syracusan accent.
Subsisted, I, and borrowed not:
small point of pride for a man,
but I did not return in triumph
to an arbor’d rest, and a grave
with native soil around me.
Here, even the gnawing worms
avoid my humble shroud and say
to one another, “A foreigner!”

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