chats in deepest Hades
with parts of a fellow sacrifice—
“A spleen, you say?
That’s what the thing that . . . that my mother . . .
no, no! Agave!
that foreign Agave who seemed my mother.
I think that’s better.
Foreign, therefore Distant. Exotic. Yes,
Forest or Desert, or Sea Surge
must have yanked from my shredded torso
to display before the eyes of my plucked head
before those eyes were plucked also.
But a spleen? No. Well. No, I think not.
Still, what’s a body part here and there anyway
when there’s no body anymore
to part with?”
What will be Thebes, brain-birth of drama,
of Greece,
where the worn stones,
the amphicosmos of theater with no body in it?
No stage, no cast, no gods, no poet
Nor eyes nor ears
Έξοδος Σοφία:**
Enter the pasquinade End o’ Days:
Which way I fly—I myself—We fall . . .
Eσχατολογία***
Fin: lights fade on Gogo’s lone boots duckfooted
in the dying light on stage——
Again and again: There’s no lack of void . . .
FOOTNOTES
* Appreciation to Anne Carson for her translation of Euripides’ Bakkhai, first staged at the time of Athens’ abrupt decline, in 404 BC, foreboding perhaps the U. S. on or about Inauguration Day, 2025.
** The best I can render in Greek for the direction, “Exit Wisdom” [Sophia].
*** Eschatologia, the centuries-old Christian puzzlement over the nature of the “end times.” Maybe an appropriate study still: maybe not.
