Pythos
(Un)burial
Under
the frigid stars of initiation
a
blacksmith pulls back his hair, not knowing
what
comes next, whether after
a
world of forgiveness will rise in the steam
from
the quench as a stream
of
ancient vowels encloses him.
The
pythos slides from its burial cloth,
root
and soil beneath the canopy
olive-blue.
Branches part their leaves
to
receive it, shining in near-darkness
as
palms level with the dirt
supplicate
their touch.
Trireme
Having
neared the beginning of their dreams, pines creak
like
the bones of old men, warring ships and lost memories
at
the outset of death. From where I labor, the harbor
seems
far, Trireme planks fit stubbornly into place: pitch,
tar,
lime, hair, flax glistening in the sun, glistening together
upon
the black coat, to hold back the bilgewater of my life.
Athens,
which is stone, which is vacant, Athens will remain
as
any world would. Caressed by the gods, fig and olive trees,
cypress
and dittany, extend to all your eternal welcome.
Skeleton
of a man killed by the earthquake inside a kitchen, Western Crete, A.D. 365
Blessed with consciousness, the
hourglass
that
foresees its running out
the
dance, while choreographed, consumes
the
exact extent
of
its flame, the length of an unjust shadow
as
a door slowly opens
from
beneath, diminishes. Then
crouching
vibrations of unguentarium
and
oinochoe, the clutched man’s ram’s head
handle
as the aftershocks
bend
his body into a final contortion, stilled.
Darkness
in
darkness passed, whose event has no name,
a
wordless sliding-
into,
towards. The lines we try to lift are pillars
falling. Along the skeletal ridge of Polyrrhenia,
sleek
wind
turbines turn ceaselessly.
The
Sanctuary of Poseidon Hippios
I
imagine Hadrian
standing
high on a wall overlooking an escarpment
and
high above the scaffolding leading from
the
old sanctuary, overseer
after
overseer
like
dots, or lashes riding out over the sea crests.
The
workers below, fitting with oak logs
the
new sanctuary around the old, baked in the sun,
sense
his orders rippling
through
the chain of command—to not look into
the
old sanctuary,
and
if they did, then they would face Poseidon’s wrath.
Of
course, he didn’t…
But
the body is not an event. The body listens to you
being
called back from breath.
Could
they, who had heard rumors, but bore their necks
down
into the dirt’s tide
not
have followed their own fingers along the abyssolithic
contour
at night—only in darkness,
for
some undreamt-of thing, expressions of a will beyond
what
his had done, earth-shaker, King of horses,
Poseidon.
A
Pythos Jar
What
would it mean to die a second time, more fragile
than
the first, yet also a solider clay, which earth
has
let rest in an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens.
Suppose
we lie asleep beneath the ancient canopy, others
nearby,
untouched except by vibrations of hooves
where
the goatherd passes above with clanging bells,
and
below, where roots like vines twist with the delicacy
of
a sheep’s hair brush, its vibrant lilac. Would our sleeping
skin
then bristle with wind-nettle? Would we be struck
by
dawn with the same necessity, shaken from complacency,
if
its fires, gradually cooling through the strata of us,
were
never to arrive? Yet a pythos jar was lain on its side,
with
all the care we care to imagine, the remains within
of
one who once wore laurel olive leaf, whose eyes shone
beneath
the blue canopy where we lie, trying for the life of us
to
somehow think our way out of things. He rests for one
long
moment, not to speculate on anonymous nothingness;
his
dust’s dimpled compaction, his hair’s grassy thread, can be
described
neither as smile nor as victory. The hastily drawn
shades
of the hotel, light crashing through in the morning,
are
not inevitable. A voice rising to meet ours before we realize
that
we are shattered is not inevitable.
David Capps
is a philosophy professor at Western Connecticut State University. He is the
author of three chapbooks: Poems from the First Voyage (The Nasiona
Press, 2019), A Non-Grecian Non-Urn (Yavanika Press, 2019), and Colossi
(Kelsay Books, 2020). He lives in New Haven, CT.