The maiden glowed to think she'd be the bride
to great Achilles, though he's overseas.
Too soon, she'll learn that Agamemnon lied;
he'd sold his daughter for a friendly breeze.
At Aulis, there's no swag to pay the fleet;
the great adventures looking like a bust.
To salvage honor through this rank deceit,
his marriage foundered on a dearth of trust.
His Klytemnestra's not one to forget.
A war to get his brother's woman back,
entangled him in his own wife's silk net.
The victor's victim to her gleaming ax.
Since Tantalus, this dynasty's been cursed;
each generation seems to wear it worse.
Her sister'd maddened half the men of Greece,
but Kkytemnestra's no great prize to wed.
Her husband won at war, but died in peace;
that garland's useless when you've lost your head.
Twin Tyndarids proved equally unchaste;
One ran off with a pretty Asian lad.
To marry for a famously fair face,
to Homer's mind, is bound to turn out bad.
Odysseus brought home the best of wives,
Penelope, who matched his famous wit.
While other paid for glory with their lives,
the man of many ways proved the most fit.
When we recall the Mycenaean world
the tales turn on Tyndareus' girls.
Her sentinels report: the watchfires flare;
king Agamemnon's coming home from war.
Aegysthos who had shirked his duty there,
starts planning to slink out the postern door.
It's Klytemnestra lays the bolder plan:
she'll lay the crimson carpet for his tread,
surpassing Helen to betray her man;
she'll take not just his honor, but his head.
Cassandra's prophecy's a wasted breath.
They put no credence in such future facts.
She's heard the swirling blood; she's smelled the death
She's seen the subtle net, the gleaming ax.
Peleides died young, but won renown;
Odysseus pushed through to win long life.
But Atreus' heir just gets hewn down
mere barnyard livestock to his fancy wife.
The meta-narrative can criticize
heroic figures, painting them life-size
The camp falls silent;Nestor stands to speak
this Argonaut knows much that's gone before.
Experience is precious to these Greeks,
who'd never contemplated ten years' war.
He'd left a son Telemachus' age
to fight for Helen, whom he'd never wooed.
But with Achilles seething in his rage
the enterprise may utterly be screwed.
The ego Agamemnon can't control
precludes commanding loyalty from men
who see which kings could better play the role
without inflaming rancor, yet again.
If leadership's not vested in the wise,
the greatest squabble, for the merest prize.
bin Salman's virtue's nowhere to be found;
his failures heap up stinking to the sky.
No resume that justifies a crown,
when Salman must inevitably die.
He got away with murdering Mansour,
and still Khashoggi's body won't stay hid.
No honest judge could deem his hands are pure,
if they knew just a hundredth what he did.
Yemeni orphans starving, curse his name;
Qataris he'd blockaded didn't fold.
For these, and more he's utterly to blame
Without a brain, it's parlous to be bold.
Allied to Trump, he's doomed to sink or swim
And Vegas isn't taking odds on him.
No towel dried her husband from his bath;
fair Klytemnestra swathed him in her net.
The victor's victim to his woman's wrath;
their firstborn's not some kid whom she'd forget.
Aegysthos lurked just off the killing floor;
no royal blood would stain his dainty hand.
To stay at home while others sailed to war,
the playwright marks this one as not a man.
Her cousin labors tireless to reweave
the shroud that she'd unpicked by candlelight.
The faithful wife who's careful to deceive
the villains violating what is right.
The textile arts, deployed for good, or ill,
no less than bronze, can bind a wound...or kill.
Great swathes of central Oregon ablaze,
a million acres, near as we can tell.
Horizons dwindle in this toxic haze;
myopically, we navigate through Hell.
Fire policies embraced in 1910
that felt so forward-looking, now seem cruel.
We've queued the same catastrophe again
Suppressing every fire, we banked up fuel.
A managed forest, leaving room to drive
more like the climax woodland long before,
might flare up briefly, yet go on to thrive.
Instead, each August smells like baleful war.
Until--improbably--we really learn
we'll build more wooden houses, and they'll burn.
