The Agenda

Half a world away
I could see the wrath of Poseidon building
 
There wasn’t much to point to:
disembodied gaze,
turn of the head,
steely sheen on the sea
 
I tried to warn them in Troy,
told them about the army of boats blackening towards them,
the cold undercurves of the light
 
told them about the fires,
the screams, yelling, flesh,
how the flesh howls for dying even after it’s dead
the trunk decapitated and the howl still standing
in the air
 
about the wrinking of the earth
like an apple rotting after,
the ridges of the wrinkles the unburied dead
 
told them about the city’s final mouldering
 
I flew home and said it all again:
went door
to door, street
to street, to all the squares of the city
fingernails snagging in sleeves, anything
to get their attention and make them listen
 
while the light grew colder
and my brother sickened
and would not leave.
 
The Trojans said
You have an expatriate mind
said
Shouldn’t you be discussing this somewhere else
said
Look: nothing but thin blue air.
 
They locked me in the tower.
I heard my brother and the city
fall
 
and when the Greeks smashed the doors and dragged me
I saw him,
disembodied gaze
turn of the head
 
a Greek standing in his brains.
 
If I could have plucked my heart out
and my eyes and tongue
and given them to him
 
or given them to the gods
to unwind the clashing sky and turn it back
I would have
 
but the gods were deaf
and the rocks and the ground and the air and the hills are deaf
 
And Poseidon in his dull steel greaves
stepped onto the fallen sky
the hardening sea of blood
 
lightning bolt, trident;
staring
daring the red and level dark to become a womb.