This news is peculiarly affecting and spurred a fleeting impulse in me to write a poem about it. I say “fleeting” because I remembered that Richard Wilbur has already addressed the issue beautifully, although concerning a different people and a different language: To the Etruscan Poets Dream fluently, still brothers, who when youngTook with your mother’s milk the mother tongue, In which pure matrix, joining world and mind,You strove to leave some line of verse behind Like still fresh tracks across a field of snow,Not reckoning that all could melt and go.Read More