Echoes from the Greek
I find myself returning to the Greek legends, time and again, in my own mind and on the written page, to understand and express concepts and emotions that seem otherwise to be painfully elusive. Here are two recent poems—both sonnets. The first, with its unnamed reference to Prometheus, the second taken from a brief account in The Odyssey. The first is a poem of hope, the second of the futility of fate. Both expand in strange directions from their originals (Aeschylus and Homer), a thing possible because of the multi-dimensionality of these legends.
Promethean Flame
I seek the dawn; no more do I believe
The dark: the drifting of the earth unlit
Through time, as though the ancient flame received
From titan never came and still we sit
In somber counsel with but little wit;
As though we have no power to undo
The chaos that envelops life, the pit
That beckons at the end of all. Untrue,
Untrue, again untrue! The vision through
The darkening night calls out for courage; lies
Avail not; let our hearts be kindled new
To find the day; and like the flames that rise,
We climb from out the darkness that has passed
To greet the morrow, where the light is vast.
The Dove of Zeus
Against the winds my weary voice will fail,
No echo caught within the storm’s fierce eye
While endlessly the winds go lashing, wail
Their mindless movement across miles of sky.
The futile falling of the stricken bird—
Zeus makes no promise that it has its worth,
Poor tiny dove--is then my call unheard
Beyond the surge of sea and knife-sharp earth?
I called out from the mythic rock’s fierce sides
One moment ere I crashed into the wave
Where only shock of sea and stone abides;
Was there naught precious for great Zeus to save?
Bore I no nectar of Olympian bliss?
Bore I no life that my bright mate might miss?