Athens
Athens will steal your heart
and all the cash you carry
if you are not very careful
on the crowded streets and trams.
It’s never Greeks who do it;
always those damn gypsy folk,
you'll certainly hbe told –
a pestilence in Europe
down the centuries for sure.
They have insinuated into
every culture that they’ve met,
and learned survival from the best
instructors of so many hostile worlds.
So gaze across at Parthenon
upon Acropolis, and thank
those 19th century Englishmen,
Lord Elgin first to mind,
who first inspired your taste
for all things ancient Greek
with those marbles that they "rescued"
for that museum back at home.
Lysistrada Starts Women's Day
I'm sure it was some time like this
with spring a month away
that Athen's Lysistrata
with friends, had this to say:
"Men, turn your swords to ploughshares.
Forget the wars you'd win.
You'll get no ploughing here at home
until the crops are in."
And being guys, they thought a bit
but not too long or hard
then shoulder-punched and headed home
to work their own backyard.
Lysistrata's ancient wisdom
may inform our world today
declaring sanctity of life
beyond aggression's sway.
The hope today in women's role,
assuming global power
is that we move the world to peace
in this its desperate hour.
Olympia Then & Now
The test resolves itself
to an athlete's urine
now and so long ago.
In far Olympia
some student
of Hippocrates
at Greece’s ancient games,
would taste an athlete’s piss
to find the herbal
signature that gave
advantage to some
hopeful over-eager
for success.
Today the detailed
urinalysis seeks out
our modern chemicals of shame.
It all comes down it seems,
after all the contests and the crowds,
to that single dab of urine
tasted or tested then or now,
though no one thought nor thinks
to test credentials of the judges,
or hosts or financiers or lab
with just as much at stake
as any athlete in the race
for glory or for gold.
Samari Gorge
Walk through millenia
together, every step,
an eon of accomplishment
until
the stubborn earth
reveals
itself a billion years before
in every fossil, folded layer
of rock.
Walk back beside me
as the youthful, hiking hordes
swarm like lemmings past us
to the ferries at the sea,
while we keep looking upwards
where the overhanging gorge
is just a jagged cleft above us
lighting boulders at our feet
Walk on, we two
as always
in the valley of our time
with all the world bypassing,
all the layers of life above us
and all the present stones beneath,
we stumble still at moments
catch the other
carry on
to find a rest
where all the waters
seek the sea.