Linda Stern: At the Jetty

You climbed the jetty leading to the sea,
and I hung back to let you try your skill
at navigating life apart from me
though you were not so far I could not still

reach for you if you slipped and fell. I know
that wasn’t fair, my child upon the shore.
You’ve told me many times to let you go.
To say good-bye—that’s what I raised you for.

You may be right. How can we tell what’s true?
Antinous whom Caesar made a god
was not more loved or beautiful than you.
Yet he, unmoored, was lost. How, much more awed

and helpless than a king, shall I not fear
a sudden fate will bear you far from here?

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Author’s note: Antinous, born about 110 CE, was the young male lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian. He had been a companion of Hadrian’s for several years when, about the age of twenty, he drowned in the Nile River. The circumstances surrounding Antinous’s death are mysterious. Some commentators suggest that the death might have been a self-sacrificial suicide during a religious rite. Hadrian had been ill, and cultic sacrifices could be done to propitiate the gods in cases of illness although Hadrian himself seems to have abhorred human sacrifice. It’s also quite possible that the death was simply accidental. Whatever the cause, Hadrian, overwhelmed by grief, declared Antinous a deity and set about establishing a cult and building shrines, as well as an entire city, Antinoöpolis, in his honor. Antinous was held to be the epitome of male beauty, and numerous statues of his likeness survive to this day.

Discussions of the historical relationship between Hadrian and Antinous often emphasize the idea of homosexuality—Hadrian and Antinous constitute one of the most iconic homosexual couples in the ancient world. However, my sonnet focuses on more general themes of human love and loss—especially on the love and loss, as well as the fear of loss, involved in the parental task of letting go. The speaker in my poem uses Antinous—a legendary archetype of a greatly loved and exceptionally beautiful young person—to assert, by comparison, that no one is more cherished and more beautiful than one’s own beloved.

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Copyright 2025 Linda Stern. From A Folded History: Poems and Mythologies, Edited by Philip Walsh and Rachel Hadas (Ragged Sky, 2025).

First publication: Linda Stern. “At the Jetty.” The Classical Outlook 99.3 (2024): pages 190-91. Poem commentary by Linda Stern, The Classical Outlook 99.3 (2024): page 191. 

Linda Stern’s poems have appeared in American Arts Quarterly, Big City Lit, Crab Orchard Review, Kin Poetry Journal, Mezzo Cammin, Minyan magazine, The New Criterion, The Raintown Review, and other publications. Her book, Why We Go by Twos, is available from Barefoot Muse Press. She co-published the poetry magazine Endymion and was associate editor of the online poetry journal Umbrella. She is a co-host of the Morningside Poetry Series in Manhattan and serves on the Board of Directors of Poetry by the Sea, an annual literary conference.