The war's been dragging on for millennia.
Sometimes there is a break, a breather,
to gather new strength, to beget posterity
who will carry on the struggle
so that those coming in the footsteps of the Blind Bard
can properly memorialize everything;
at times like these the victorious Agamemnon, too,
used to come home to visit with his family.
When I knew him he had just returned
from a pow camp along with Odysseus,
but in the meantime his wife had taken up with a horse trader who, however, didn't kill the old soldier
and so
the children didn't have a murder to avenge.
He drowned his sorrows in drink, went on the skids.
At the end, for a shot of brandy, he would tell of
his glorious exploits on the battlefield:
from Troy to the distant Don River.
He kept swearing that one day he would kill Clytemnestra
along with that cowardly crook who here, in his home,
while he, out there ... They laughed at him, but then
gave him the bum's rush when they got tired of him.
He made his home in a sand pit, that was
where he froze to death in that winter described
in the papers as:
"The worst in recent memory ..."
Electra and Orestes were engaged elsewhere and unable
to attend the funeral paid for by public donations,
but they were there in spirit: "It was all for the best.
May God forgive his sins. It's a big load
off our minds."
the mute
At times I still hear infants'
marrow-piercing howl.
Europe speaks in many chords.
Not only the muses of Helicon but
the babies thrown off Mount Taygetus
deafened the gods of fate.
The millennia of howling,
the plucking of harps and zithers,
the beating of drums,
the roar of bells and engines,
the shelling and the bombing,
have blasted out an atmospheric
pressure cave,
rendering us hard of hearing.
Taygetus has taken root in us.
Our shoelaces can undo themselves.
All it takes is one hard look, the wave of a hand,
and we fall in line, dumb and numb,
some with head held high, some deeply bent,
but we all obey the call.
There was a deaf-mute living next door,
a real hard-working beast of burden,
they'd kept his nose to the grinding stone
till he turned into one.
When the Spartan Home Security came to pick
him up though, he earned a place in history:
he grabbed a pitchfork and started
to kick, bite and claw
like he used to as an infant,
and he howled too, but as an adult.
how much longer
this non-conformist fever will burn
only until it shapes up as
a cozy tenured position
with all benefits paid
and from the backseats of power
it will look like dissent when
someone tries to keep warm by
blowing on his fingers or shuffling
