was that it was of course human enough to die,
yet to come back, as he said, hoc opus, hic labor est.
In this stanza, Creeley mentions Virgil and alludes to his Aeneid. Specifically, he references the part of the poem where Aeneas asks the priestess Sibyl how to see his father in the underworld, and she replies that going there is easy but returning is hard. The Latin phrase translates roughly to "that is the task, that is the labor." The use of the untranslated Latin phrase draws further attention to his allusion. Quoting it in Latin also appears like a subtle challenge to Virgil, making plain that Creeley is deeply familiar with his work. The function of this passage as a whole is to show that Aeneas is at his most "human" when he shows himself to be vulnerable.
This is Robert Creeley, and Virgil
is dead now two thousand years,
At this point in the text, Creeley formally announces himself as the speaker of the poem. This moment is particularly striking in that he then immediately references Virgil again and states that he "is dead now two thousand years." While not offering a harsh critique of his work, Creeley does seem to be saying that his own work is breaking out of the model set forth by Virgil. He later acknowledges that the work Virgil labored over has endured, alongside its resulting wisdom, but he still seems to have reservations. Here, he implies that he is searching for a new way to write about heroes. It is a boldly dramatic move on Creeley's part.
In all those stories the hero
is beyond himself into the next
thing,
These opening lines clearly establish what will become the main thesis of the poem. In much of the epic poetry of the Western canon, the heroes are constantly shuttling between dramatic events: fights with gargantuan monsters, impossible errands from the gods, lengthy wars, and so on. Creeley categorizes these moments as "the next thing." The tone Creeley adopts here is one of frustration. He already seems to suggest that there has to be more to these stories than just the scenes of dramatic action. It sets up the idea that he will be searching for moments of humanness and vulnerability in these narratives as the poem goes on.
