Another assignment for a poetry course at the University of Delaware. This poem is in the style of Charles Simic and speaks to the decline in the worship of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses.
Silence in the street
except for heavy breath.
Hera pulls her husband,
lifeless, to the pile.
No one would believe
her alive under the bodies
of her family.
Owl screeches and flaps
into the hazy twilight.
Athena looks down.
Ares’ crimson life
warms her feet,
the gun still pointed
where his head was
five minutes ago.
A hundred yards away
Hermes was to give
a message to the King
of the Underworld
but found a lowly subject;
as Poseidon and his creation
fall victim to a land
mine while escaping
a barbed wire prison.
And Aphrodite sits –
motionless,
deaf and blind –
in the corner
of a dark room,
thick with cold mist,
even as one sister –
having lost the eye –
saws at her strand
and the bomb came through the ceiling.
There will be no glory
or remembrances
made of this day:
the nine sisters
were put in the chamber
this sunless morning.
Fate by Chad A. Morris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
