Jane Blanchard - Forum Romanum - University of Dallas

Due Santi

Jane Blanchard, poet and visiting scholar, summer 2019
A poem in honor of our Eugene Constantin Campus, affectionately known as "Due Santi," just outside of Rome, and its cherished summer visitor, the shy, distinctive and colorful upupa epops, or Hoopoe bird.

Returning here to take a class
On epics of the ancient past,
I spot a hoopoe in the grass,
Then share the sight too good to last.

The crested, long-billed bird which feeds
On insects hidden from our view
Too soon flies off to meet its needs
Some place away from me and you.

Yet it, or its close kin, comes back
With one bird more to strut around,
If briefly, while we get the knack
Of trooping through old stomping ground.