AFTER THE COUPLING

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