Clytemnestra Descending and 3 other poems

from the car
Laophonte
Mother
damned swan
each evident
in the stretch of tarsals
feathering forward
like summer over
wheat and stable rakings
her greeting
a fig leaf drip
unconcerned with
plash or tink.

The electric dust of her arrival
ionizing sisterly intent
two well-hung mules
waiting her command
her smug preening
plain as dog turd
on her heel.

My greeting parried
with a wave –
“Dear Helen,”
(nothing dear intended)
“I hope your cisterns
are quite full. My animals
need scrubbing.”

I remember Agamemnon
when we tied our horses
to a fig tree, peed a yellow stream
along its base. He wagged his
bullish ballsack
at the countryside, then
clapped my back – “I won’t forget
you when I’m given Helen.”
He took a fig and forced his tongue
into its ripe softness, made
sucks and mock-moans, and
laughed at a world created
for his pleasure.
Cicadas grew loud –
evening bats
began their erratic courses
as ours would veer
just weeks to come.
As we rode on – “Little brother,”
he said, “I’ll give you
her shy sister,
Clytem-something
too thin for fervent breeding
but sufficient
after enough wine
to keep you warm –
and you can be my
ambassador to – anywhere
while I stay home and
bang out twenty sons!”

Or does it?

Seferis knew

talking does no good.

When a polar bear 
scorns
a walrus
wants their minerals
                         land
                         children
and confers no value
beyond its own ego,
who can change the attitude of those with power?
The bear will not choose kelp to save a seal.

A million men can be snuffed
easier than a lone village candle.
Only one who values what is lost
will talk of peace.
Seferis understood:
Each dreams separately 
without hearing anyone else’s nightmare.

Seferis, George. “Salamis in Cyprus.” Collected Poems. Trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton UP, 1995. 190-92.

For Iuliia Hoban

So much
depends upon
a chestnut tree
blooming in Kyiv
defying sirens
refusing shelters
dripping its white glaze
of integrity
spattered with
heroes’ blood.