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A Piety
I had been satisfied.
The dead surrendered to the
winds,
I praised the God they too had
praised
As though those long consecrated to the
pyres,
Then raised Moonward as ash
Had by now filtered above the cirrus
clouds
And left the blue sky clean beneath
them.
They were neither my nation nor my
blood.
I would breathe,
And imagine I did not draw them in with
every breath.
I would stand here,
In the audacious city blooming off the
desert floor
Honoring the sacred gulf between myself
and He
who stands astride the broad-faced
mountain
Soaring to a peak, tallest among the
western ridge
And crossed daily by the ascending slash
of the Sun.
But I would have that space cleared
Of those who once too stood apart this
distance
And shouted Ie! Ie Paian!
East, the angeloi rise to greet the
morning.
East, opposite Apollo's
mountain
A package of F-16s appears above me, and
is gone.
First one, then a pause, and
another,
Four grey shafts upon the
blue,
Streaking west toward the
mountain.
Then the lead rolls right, metal wing
dipped, and
One by one, the fighters vanish
northwest.
Only now, the engine shriek ebbed
off,
The alerted wailings of all the car
alarms.
Come dusk, they will return in tight
couples.
I peer into a black nozzle and regard the
gold jet-wash,
Kindled, now kindled low
Which only minutes ago had shot back a
hard Mach diamond,
The fighter craft a faint streak then in
the high thin air.
I witness this and am satisfied among the
living.
I do not pine for the curvèd prows
of Salamis
Nor the crewmen, each long taken up into
Night.
Here is good country, in a good
world,
And the Gods are with us.
They are proved athanatoi, the Deathless
Ones.
I have disremembered the
moment,
But that it came in a single
moment
Is printed on my mind.
It came like a footstep across an
unmarked line.
I have learned to see in just this
tracklessness
The tracks of Gods.
It came, and afterward I heard a hollow
pit inside the air
That once was thick with the hymns as
though with moisture.
Each year brought the choirs to Claros.
They
Marched singing through the triple
gate.
They sang before their fathers, who
themselves had sung.
The priest had sipped of the water, and
was ready.
Mnêsomai oude lathômai
Apollônos hekatoio,
honte theoi kata dôma Dios
tromeousin ionta:
kai rha t' anaïssousin epi schedon
erchomenoio
pantes aph' hedraôn, hote phaidima
toxa titainei.
They sang a thousand years, and then cut
short.
The words remain as fishbones in the
sand.
The music is devoured as mortal flesh is
devoured.
What came and was passed to me was no
enthusiasm,
But an overhearing of the God's
heart,
Cast upon lost honors, and an ancient
friendship.
Afterward, then, my own choice
To give the old words voice, and lay them
upon my altar.
Let them gather in the air with the white
incense smoke,
Above the pure water and the candle
flames.
Delian, bless this speaking before the
candle flames.
enth' ek nêos orouse anax hekaergos
Apollôn,
asteri eidomenos mesôi êmati:
tou d' apo pollai
spintharides pôtônto, selas
d' eis ouranon hiken:
es d' aduton kateduse dia tripodôn
eritimôn.
enth' ar' ho ge phloga daie
piphauskomenos ta ha kêla:
pasan de Krisên katechen selas: hai
d' ololuxan
Krisaiôn alochoi kallizônoi
te thugatres
Phoibou hupo rhipês: mega gar deos
embal' hekastôi.
enthen d' aut' epi nêa noêm'
hôs alto petesthai,
aneri eidomenos aizêôi te
kraterôi te,
prôthêbêi,
chaitêis eilumenos eureas ômous:
kai spheas phônêsas epea
pteroenta prosêuda:
I give voice, who have no more faced a
vowel tripthong
Than the walls of Ilium.
Still a beauty rises off this
speaking,
Beautiful the way this Sun-blast desert,
where a constant
Purple blush descends from the dawn air
to
Rest upon the salmon roofing tiles and
upon the desert
Crust also is beautiful.
The stormcloud sage will make these words
a fine familiar.
A lone stealth fighter drifts low above
our roofs.
Slow, and otherworldly,
It is itself the shadow it would
cast.
Alone, and it does not break northwest
but glides due west
Toward the mountain.
I am ready.
I will press these old words
Till they are ground again to
song.
Afterward, my Lord, only you know what
magic.
.
In Your Honor. Todd Jackson
Full texts of the Greek hymns quoted in this
poem:
Homeric
Hymn to Delian Apollo
Homeric
Hymn to Pythian Apollo
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