The Anguish of Niobe

Waking to Athene’s azured intrigues, I

sense the gods already afoot, chalking

the gilded offspring, their stalking horses,

pawing at the gates to Eleusis

in anticipation of a game’s opening bunce.

 

A blind woman in the shadows, shrouded

by the amnesic aphasia of a city’s retentate eyes,

waits for the beggar’s plunk of a stray drachma

falling free from antiquity’s purse --

any indication of recognition of those

she’d once nursed in infancy.

 

From inside the brimming bowl, the drum

and bass of a roiling horde, phalanx

of Leto’s sanguineous progeny, echoes

through the memory of centuries

to another time and place, spilling of tears

for the unforgiving green-eyed envy

of a mother’s want to know hers were first

and better born.

 

Surely, it’s in this moment, that myth

becomes the non-fiction --

that eyes open to how little we’ve gleamed

in the daze since Olympus was swept

from our feeble connexions.

Ken e Bujold 

Reviews

[Arundass TP]

Beautiful images and scenes in this poem. Loved all . Good poem. Loved it 😂