Of Troy

Of Troy

Consider the Sirens’ fate, to perish in the sea

Because they could not lure

Odysseus fair and clever

Lashed to the mast, to stay

Enthralled forever on that nameless shore,

Whose companions sported ears waxed

And willing able hands.

Such cost to pay for innocent failure, that plunge.

Well, relative innocence.

Odysseus? Odysseus…

But remind us again how you laid siege to the

Gem of the Dardanelles for nine long years

That for nine summers the politics of home played out abroad,

How for nine winters in horseplay hero strove with hero

To return a strumpet to Ithaca and a

Tarnished apple to the hand of Strife.

You tell it all so well?

***

Then consider the Inertia of what is…

How else oil the engines of war?

By what sorcery conjure the lightning to ignite our hearth fires

And how shall we ever coax the glowing dragon

To again sleep in its mountain lair?

Matters that boggle the intellect of man, evidently.

The rich grow richer and the hungry hungrier

Through no fault of their own.

For the suicides of sirens the nee wailing Banshee howls…

Makes my skin crawl and blood cow within my bowels.

Eh? Odysseus? Dumb?

Plundered Ilium lies ravished and rotten.

Odysseus, Nay?

Silence? No rap? Not so easy as to string a harp or bow…

Nothing from the horse’s mouth? Then,

A siren’s Song, perhap!