Nothing there that wasn’t before
a horse head in a drum of fire
smoke floating on bone and fat
A hundred feet above the grotto
a hundred chances to get higher
I walk to the summit to be thrilled
(It wants me killed a hundred times)
I spy a piece of honeyed glass
I take it and dive into the green
Below love clear deep water
those old white walls so shining
a hundred people sit in the theatron
The chorus wears a mask
and they all look up to the surface
waiting to be thrilled
Beauty says it isn’t love
the sun sets in another sky
love says splash doesn’t matter
each stanza beautifully poetic inasmuch as the movement between the stanzas is a teasing play between desire and its realisation
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear Efi. (Although I'm not sure that's a compliment!) But please teach me the correct Greek pronunciation of 'theatron'?
DeleteI like this lucid mystery - a play perhaps
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jeffree. Lots of ways to read this thing of course, it's pretty dreamy. Put simply, I first imagined a diver off the cliffs entering the water where he finds an ancient submerged Greek theatre. Where the ancient audience in the 'theatron' is waiting for him. I know the first stanza can jeopardise the entire thing - and "Nothing real that wasn't before", what the hell does that mean? - but I wanted a strong image of earth and fire, before the water, and finally the sky.
ReplyDelete