Hades, Persephone, Charon: 
			their advice to Orpheus all more or less 
			the same, 
				you mustn't get your hopes up, son, 
			the dead have rhythms of their own, 
			a private space that even you cannot reach.  
			Think of death as the ultimate dementia, 
			an anti-world separate from the living world. 
 
      			But he was accustomed to having people 
			stop and listen, and his songs always worked--
			even charming his way into the Underworld--
			so he clung to the hope that his music 
			would enthrall Eurydice again 
			and take her back to those happy times 
			before the viper struck.
 
			When Dad no longer knew who I was, 
			I tried once to lead him to me, step by step.  
			I was born in Tennessee, I told him, 
			wanting to believe that by looking back 
			at the partly sound memory 
			of his younger years, the damaged engine 
			of his brain would find a take of me 
			he'd recognize. Oh, really? he replied.

			In Bedford County, I added, narrowing 
			the circle, and I could see the blankness, 
			the tension beginning to show on his face, 
			but I went on, desperately, recklessly, 
				born in that old farmhouse that belonged 
			to your cousin Frank, and he looked away, 
			lost, his eyes filled with terror.
 
				Eurydice follows Orpheus as he leads her 
			towards the world of the living, no loving hand 
			reaching out to touch his shoulder, no hint 
			that his songs have moved her, nor even 
			that she knows who he is. At last, he hesitates, 
			then stops and oh-so-slowly, oh-so-full of love, 
			turns around to look at her one final time.
			
		
				--- Julian Crowell
				My thanks to Plainsongs for publishing
				"Looking Back" in their Fall, 2009 issue.