Did you know that Pessoa means person in Portuguese?
It’s a secret we share, Tony Towle and I,
because he was born on June 13,
as were Yeats and Pessoa, an esoteric duo, Gemini at its finest,
and I, born two days earlier a few years later,
feel a renewed respect for the Astrophel and Stella of divination.
Blessed be the month, the summer solstice, the lovers and stars.
“What is so rare as a day in June?” Professor Lowell asked.
I’d say the odds against a day in June were about nine to two.
What say you, Tony? “Incredible,” Tony says, “how many Gems
there are in our ‘Circles’” — Capital C, as if to include Emerson’s essay,
and I agree. And if you multiply our ratio squared by 3.14,
the area we cover will appear in the mind of a Portuguese
persona strolling along the Tagus River, chic in a beret,
sparing a thought for the sixty-year-old public man in Dublin
who looks at his granddaughter and sees Helen of Troy
courted by a stargazing poet in a cold climate
on a June night when the light grudgingly vacates the sky.
Ed note: pictured above: Tony Towle;. also born on the 13th of June: Denise Duhamel.
Tony's poem "Birthdays" appears in The Best American Poetry 2025.