Male poets concentrate
on the act, the beating
of the wings,
female poets
go past it,
to what comes
after the swan is again
an unseen god far
removed and the daily
life continues mundane
past divine intervention
in the changing
of hatchlings' diapers,
streaming slowly
towards the cascades
when Great Events
again interrupt,
and then on one shore
of the wine-dark sea
the Greek virgin's pyre
with a smell
of burning flesh,
and on the other
the burning city
and a mound
for a Trojan virgin
to die on
for a shade to feast
on her blood,
and all the bloody
business of pointless war
between,
and when the surviving
ships limp battered
home, the revenge
that comes late
between gray-haired spouses
and must be avenged,
and then, after
the blood has coagulated
on the blades,
the Furies' hunt
over, daily
life will continue mundane,
as it always will,
towards new matings,
new hatchings of divinity's
babies, new
pointless
bloody disasters.
22.03.2026
