The Party’s Over


Athens
four o’clock in the morning…
Early white
     bright  sunlight
     creeping over the
     Parthenon:  the city
asleep, the ancients
awake, as always,
     mentally sinewed,
     nodding knowingly
at their modern counterparts
     whose muscle only
     has softened--
hard cunning, irresistible
     charm adamantine--
taxiing home
     from Plaka

 

 

Ah, Greece!

 

As though look­ing for the Nativity beneath the neon lights of Christmas hawk­ers, we searched Greece and found sicca flour­ish­ing beneath the bare-​​boned ruins of our own begin­nings.  If Odysseus’ shores are now thick with bikinied beau­ti­ful peo­ple, the sun that bakes their flesh is the same as the one poor Elpenor saw before his fated, fool­ish fall.  And if the yachts, fly­ing the bril­liant flags of too much diver­sity, leave no room now for Odysseus’ single-​​purposed craft, well, that cave — the one we scanned at Aegina, the cool waters echo­ing its secret cham­bers — that cave was always there.  We said the shriek of Western rock was harsh, yet knew it did not drown the softer strains of weep­ing native instru­ments — of Hecuba bemoan­ing sons and grand­son torn at Troy.  And it was enough — oh, yes, enough! — to find but one per­fect, surf-​​smoothed shard„ frail black etch­ing speak­ing still of dark-​​haired youths and maid­ens tend­ing musky casks for Dionysus’ sake.



– by Velma Jean Reeb


_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Velma Jean Reeb com­pleted her under­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Pennsylvania State University and City College of New York.

She earned her grad­u­ate degree in Classics at Columbia University.  She has taught and tutored Latin Language and Literature, Advanced Reading and Writing, and English as a Foreign Language in New York City as well as in Athens,Greece.  A few years ago, she began study­ing and writ­ing poetry.  Her Sonnets of Love was pub­lished in Nicosia, Cyprus; her poems have appeared in the 2004 – 2008 Anthologies of the Wild AngelsPoets and Writers, pub­lished at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; and her work has been pub­lished in sev­eral issues of Sensations Magazine, 2004 – 2007.   She lives in Manhattan.





Copyright ©2009, by Velma Jean Reeb. All Rights Reserved.






Be Sociable, Share!

Related Posts: