A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

(For Carol and Jerry Kasparek)

Amasis was in Egypt king
(Whose dwelling ran a measured mile)
The upper and the lower Nile
Long ago
Whose women when he bade them sang:
The desert boogied, heaven rang,
The painted women and their men
Congoed kickshaws then and ran
In circles to the throne again
(An awesome sight
All through the night)
And every morning brought the din
Of brazen trumpets in the dawn
And incense and the throbbing gong
Proclaiming to the herded throng
Lictored by axe and stave and thong
The lurching god upon the strong
Bemuscled backs of slaves who bore
Amasis to the tavern door
Amasis to his favorite whore
Amasis to the delta’s shore
Amasis to the slaughteryard
Amasis to the holy cards
Amasis to the blooded chalice
Amasis to the darkened palace
Amasis, who will make his choice
The tender bones of little boys

Where are the children?

Amasis was in Egypt king
And women when he bade them sang
Amasis is in Egypt king
Long, long ago
(The upper and the lower Nile)
The hieroglyphic headlines ran

MAN BITES CROCODILE

And misspelt in the king’s own toilet:
Amasis is a fucking fagot

And women when he bade them sang
Amasis is in Egypt king
Here and now. Then and there.
The ululations of that crowd
The public and the public soul
Would make a modern suck outloud:
Amasis at the Super Bowl.

Rota. The Wheel turns.

On
the island of Samos
Which is in the Aegean
Just below Chios
(My dear, how plebeian)
Aegeas jumped off there
(It was all a mistake)
(You look rather pale)
No,
the funeral sail
It was, coming from Crete
(How much can she take?)
On
the island of Naxos
By signs sacrificial the singers
Symbolically writhe as they strow
The tarn and the turf by the ancient initial
(Do we drink this neat?)
And so there he left her?
No,
that was Theseus. On
the looming horizon
Under Orion
Lost in the labyrinth
Lost Ariadne
(But she pulled him out
And he’d ditched her, hadn’t he?)
It was all a mistake.
Aegeas jumped off there.
Yes, a funeral sail
After killing the monster
Lost in the maze
Lost, lost, lost in the maze
(How much can he take?)

Aprille soote played the jukeboxes
Angles and sexiness, boozy and blonde
A passage to Engelond
On
this island. On
that island. Long ago.
Here and now. Rota.
The Wheel Turns.

On the island of Samos
Which is in the Aegean
Just below Chios
Polycrates, king,
Has heard from Amasis
(For whom women sang)
Who tells him this thing:
Whatever you value
Wherever heart hearkens
Whatever you cling to
Whatever the day
The gods send this lesson
Before that day darkens
Throw it away.
Throw it away.

This king and his cronies
Provosts and ponies
Pick up their telephones
Call in their sorcerers
Suckass and Blink
Prophets to Polycrates.
Drunken and Temperate
Shittard and Squittard
Sit and debate
The meaning of fate.
The stink of their thinking,
Adjectives, adverbs,
Poisons the suburbs
Kills man’s estate.
The earth is a cauldron
Filled with dead children
Here and there. Then and now.
Long ago, long ago.
Whatever the day
Eros and clay
Throw it away.

Nuclear Winter.

Polycrates upon this beach
Of history beyond our reach
Sets sail in windy mythos
His bireme has a two-toned deck
He travels armed with travel cheques
In fides bona
And on his finger is a ring
A silver and a turquoise thing
He got in Arizona.
Throw it away.
Here and now, then and there, long ago,
Throw it away.

At noon o’clock Egyptian time
A fisher with a fishing line
Fishes a wondrous fish.
Throw it away.
A poor man, he so loves his king
He hopes to do the proper thing
Fetching it for the king’s own golden dish.
The cook there, something of a dork
Himself, retrieves the precious torq
And takes it to his master.
Thus in such homely things we find
The workings of the mythic mind,
The trappings of disaster.
Feckless Polycrates
Calls his amanuensis.
To the mendicant mendacious
Tyrant, Amasis:
What is this mystery? What fatal vision?
Now all bonds are broken
Amasis bespoken
Has written this token
Of trust to Oroetes:
Polycrates lies.
Long ago. Then and now.
The laugh of derision.
A dearth of replies.
As over windy Sardis blows
Subject to any vagrant breeze
Pendulant from his shattered knees
The ruins of Polycrates
The tattered remnants of a king
Amasis, for whom women sang,
The cosmos and the constellations row.

This bitterest of solstices
We live in is your history
Is mythos, is the Mystery
And when we sit and talk of two
Doomed lovers, we are circumspect.
It is as though, long, long ago
In doubt of present peril we wrecked
And we lost you. Then and now
As Hasdrubal and Hamilcar
Sit in this grim Midwestern bar
And listen
As we tell tales of windy gales
The furies brought us and our fates
We weathered out when we were mates
And our eyes glisten. There and then.
Here and now.
Rota. The Wheel turns.