Tuesday, June 20, 2023

The Judgments of Paris

 

If Aphrodite has the sweetest voice,

Athena’s song is written best. What tunes

The smitten sing teeter towards the silly,

And they don’t care. Athena crams her songs

With polyglottal, multivalent stuff

The other goddesses cannot even spell.

(Hera never sings. She will whoop and gloat

In victory and smirks at fealty,

If other than coerced. Her hawk-like eyes

Half the time fail to see you and don’t ask

Whether you like her song or not. You won’t.)


Towards whom do you extend the golden apple?

Skin buckles, loses elasticity.

The most tyrannical grow old and weak,

Leaving to other brokers all their vassals.

The vessels even of the wise constrict,

And they forget their shoes and Mother's name.

So where do you trust? You ought to know that war

Ensues from every possibility,

Slaughter and carnage, orphanage and rape

And plague and wholesale urban extirpation.

So choose now, if you please. It’s what we do.


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