At the edge of the world
where Ocean begins and ends
the great serpent consuming its own tail
where the purple sun never sets
and oarsmen in galleys cough blood
like sprays of lace freezing on the wind
where starlight fissures the icebergs
and a black cloud that is leviathan himself
hovers on the seafloor
surfacing one night as an island
in the dreams of a Spartan queen
a widow at twenty alone in her bed
who suddenly finds herself wandering this island
vast as a continent which a man walking
every day of his life could not cross
•
When drums awaken her at dawn
the queen watches the revelers-turned-supplicants
paint-smeared and bleary-eyed climb
the steep alleys through a maze of tenements
past sleepless crowds angry children cripples &
hunchbacks
around the ashes of mountainous bonfires
to the temple where oxen clatter
on the black tiles
and the ax blade touched to a grindstone
throws up a veil of sparks
and the marble basin is scoured
before catching its river of blood
•
A man cross-legged on a boulder
above a nest of vipers plays a flute
a sinuous melody he heard a woman humming
in the marketplace as she swept by
so that he caught only a glimpse
of her white dress and black hair
and the shock of her red kerchief
that kept flashing before him
when he picked apples from a pyramid
•
Rendering the queen in limestone
the ghostly gesture with which she beckons
an invisible companion to her side
the sculptor has distilled the essence
of the empire in decline
a ripeness inappropriate to winter
a hollow beneficence
and a bravado better left to another time
another queen
more beloved of the mob
more subtly attuned to the king
her stars so propitious she can do no wrong
•
On a dirt floor priests indistinct
as their footprints arrange charred bones
and toss pebbles attempting to decipher
the fate of a fleet commander
who disappeared seeking a passage
at the northern mouth of Ocean
where the ice is thick
as two men standing one atop the other
miles of it streaming
off the end of the earth
beneath a sky in which the commander
found no familiar constellations
just a quarter moon a milk-white sun
and a comet that foretold the end
of the world he had left behind
•
Ghosts perched on rooftops
bridges and parapets
watch the girls dance in the square
silken flowers behind their ears
and sandals of mist on their feet
as they slide back and forth in a long chain
and stare at the clear sky
white clouds sailing across their eyes
blowing out to sea
•
The queen’s innermost chamber
lies at the center of a labyrinth
no man can find
corridors adorned with mirrors and tapestries
the urns of her husband’s ancestors
and frescoes depicting the gods at play
Apollo pursuing Daphne through the woods
Zeus and Leto coupling in the form of quails
Poseidon turning himself into a stallion
to ravish Demeter transformed into a mare
a dizzying series of such scenes
culminating in a portrait outside her bedroom
of the queen herself costumed as Artemis
hair streaming bow in hand and one slender foot
resting on a stag with an arrow through its heart
•
In the book that catalogs lost books across time
one entry has been deleted
a volume recently recovered that chronicles
a failed expedition in the great expanse
beyond Ocean from which a lone sailor
returned frostbitten and feverish
to report his fleet blown off course
shipwrecked eventually on the moon
where he claimed a few survivors gazed down
briefly on the gods themselves
an unforgiveable transgression
before freezing to death
