Thursday 23 January 2014

18. Homeric Song



Sing us another song, Homeros
All about fights again, or
How great and good are the immortal gods
How good & true our fellow countrymen

Oh, here, Homeros, we can sing
the crushing force of finance capital
an intellectual abstraction, yes, but
like the gods inflicting an excess of pain

This wound in our language
not from those immortals’ spear thrusts
but our flawed & futile natures
cracked out of a mould we’d shaped ourselves

We never knew the true constraints
sang like children in the sun
play then happily on the rubble
all that is left by nightfall

Karla and Darrel now are voyagers
and it doesn’t matter what language
they all tell lies but then
what else are we given to tell?


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