Old Thebes. Jericho. Uruk. Or Göbekli

Tepe. The burly megalithic walls

and gates that Amphion  magicked to life

with his pied-piping flute.

*

And then. The kids at one another’s throats.

Antigone hanged in her cell. The monster

with vulture’s talons, mouth of a harpy,

brain of an owl, an eagle eye surveying

the carrion of the city’s stasis. Old Oedipus

stumbling alone and blind across the wreckage,

guided by daughters long-dead.

He’s seen it all. Poor sod. I’ll pop off now

and drop a boulder on poor Aeschylus’s

head.  The riddler giggling. The giggler

riddling. Nothing? The question put jeopardy-

style. What is a man? She swoops down, scooping up

the lion’s share of brains, before hyenas dash in.

*

Back further in history. And there is always

further back, isn’t there? And back and back.

The sexual assault that severed Asia

from Europe. And flung poor Cadmus out to test

his manhood on the open seas, with but

an A to Z to guide him on his rocking way.

And poor Teiresias about his quiet business

in the woods, chancing upon two snakes entwined.

And for this coitus interruptus punished

with gender switched. The gift of prophecy

his dubious compensation for blindness

and ostracism. That business with Echo

and Narcissus. And Pentheus torn limb from limb

by women become wolves. And this only

the intermission. Not the main story to be told.

*

Oedi the sphinx dad mum. The kids. Blind bloody-

mindedness. No death. No worse than that: translation  

to nowhere. No constellation twinkle-twinkling

in the night sky. There’s just an emptiness where dad

was. The panther sprung from the earth.

The son knotted with brother, step-father

to himself and she likewise a daughter-in-law

to her own self. Jocasta noosed. Antigone—

daughter and grand-daughter, daughter and half a sister.

The family tree is blasted and all askew

and strange is the fruit that hangs from it.

*  

Way back: Harmony and her necklace. A genesis

that falls first on deaf ears, cries wolf,

and then inexorably unfolds.