Greek & Roman Mythology

Iphigenia: Politics

The stairs lead to the room as bleak as glass
Where fancy turns the statues.
The empty chairs are dreaming of a protocol,
The tables, of a treaty;
And the world has become a museum.

(The girl is gone,
Fled from the broken altar by the beach,
From the unholy sacrifice when calms became a trade-wind.)

Reading Ovid at the Plastic Surgeon’s

No one else with a book, the slick
weeklies gossip amongst

themselves on the side
tables as the ticker rolls the Dow

Jones down down down under
a profile of the marathon

bombers (the older, a boxer). Jove
argues for the removal of a race

of   peoples that do not please
him: What is past

remedy calls for the surgeon’ s
knife. They will take a hunk of my

cheek (cancer) & though I can’ t
see during the procedure, I imagine

the site as an apricot, bitten.
This is a survival mechanism —

From “Ithaca”

The night approaches. Dusk drafts on buildings
their future ruins. Dusk deepens windows
and apertures. It hollows stones
with shadows like with water. It foretells
the near death of a hundred clouds
to the shining host. A thin layer of dust,
the seer leaves his footprints on the roofs
as he walks home from the future
not his own, swallowing his voice —
in its rays, fat blood flows down
the golden armor. Wet
blue entrails. Large heads
have rolled down the shoulders.
Speech has grown silent in deep mouths.

“I saw a man this morning”

I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die
I ask, and cannot answer,
If otherwise wish I.

Fair broke the day this morning
Against the Dardanelles;
The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks
Were cold as cold sea-shells.

But other shells are waiting
Across the Aegean sea,
Shrapnel and high explosive,
Shells and hells for me.

Saul Bass Redesigns the First Man

To make, you first have
to create materials. Re: man, we know
the rib removed. But, before — ?
Forget ash to ash, dust
& c.

Stick a floating rib (i. e. thoracic
11 – 12, y’ know — “Edenic”) in a glass
of  water with the promise
it’ ll grow
roots like leek or fur

In Memory of Bryan Lathrop

So in Pieria, from the wedded bliss
Of Time and Memory, the Muses came
To be the means of rich oblivion,
And rest from cares. And when the Thunderer
Took heaven, then the Titans warred on him
For pity of mankind. But the great law,
Which is the law of music, not of bread,
Set Atlas for a pillar, manacled
His brother to the rocks of the Scythia,
And under Aetna fixed the furious Typhon.
So should thought rule, not force. And Amphion,
Pursuing justice, entered Thebes and slew

Pages