Disturbing Ovid 2013

The dawn arrived in her soft saffron car,

reading the paper over breakfast, sweet

nectar'd honey on toast sating the host,

the suns rays lighting dusty travellers in it's beams.

Done with the drivel of the world and it's schemes

I put the paper down to listen to the silence

ignoring the cultural clatter coming from afar.

The silence encouraged thought to morph

away from the modern moribund malaise

to an ancient, distant realm where love

is cruel, and men are destroyed by Gods

and treachery paid for in blood.

In the timeless tunnels of the psyche

smoky, sulphur smeared torches lit the way

To the stories of old that once held

all our hopes and deepest fears.

Of heroic deeds, and tragic loss of love.

A mythological pathway, stained by the

bathing of wounded hearts in tears.

I thought of mighty Atlas, conned to carry

the weight of the world upon mountainous

shoulders...

And of the Serpents teeth, which

when sown, armies of dead are grown.

Of Lydian sailors cast into the ocean spray

by the boy Bacchus, a man at play.

Of Medusa’s nemesis upon winged Pegasus

and the slaying of The Gorgon.

Of arrogant fools challenging the Gods

turned into Owls, Bats and Frogs.

Of love so cruel. Echo and Narcissus,

and poor Pyramus and Thisbe.

all these tales and more did fill my reverie.

But these visions and the fresh

beauty of silence withered into the air…

destroyed by the incessant

buzzing of a Bluebottle

lost in curtains of poor taste

from which it had now escaped.

Child of the serpent race, child of Mars, I know your tricks

you seek to destroy this process of transcendence.

I’m the eye in this universe. Your guise is no disguise,

your ploy fails upon the display cabinet filled with decorative tat.

Lydian dolphins, plaster garlands, marble elephants,

plastic tresses scented with myrrh, crystal glasses and all that.

I slake my thirst for vengeance

with a weapon that proffered some hope

a rolled up copy of The Guardian’s

G2 supplement, a man on the edge

with no use for the company of

noisy nymphs, a man at the end of his rope.

Swat!

My winged tormentor, fast though it was,

fell lifeless into the bin. The silence returned,

for annoying nymphs, a lesson learned.

To disturb the thoughts of the Gods

is a dangerous pastime. Fly silently

little demons...else, you may get burned.

So sayeth Zeus! 'Ret'd'.

Paul Williams©2006 revised 2013