Lysistrada Starts Women's Day
I'm sure it was some time like this
with spring a month away
that Athen's Lysistrada
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.
Lysistrada'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.
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 be 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.
Peloponnese Journey
This was a tour of the Peloponnese,
a mountainous land
and the birthplace of Greece.
This was a journey through
lands that we’d heard of
but never encountered
so close up and real.
This was a journey through
landscapes impossible:
villages, temples, hung
cliff side and vales.
Geography could well have been
all that there was.
But this was a trek
into time Neolithic,
walking the cobbles
Mycenaeans walked.
This was a journey
through legend, myth, history;
written by iron
in marble and blood.
Theseus, Paris,
Achilles, Odysseus,
communed with their gods;
and found favour or failed.
This was a lesson in history more recent:
Roman and Christian, Byzantine, Jew,
Ottoman Turk in advance and retreat.
Young churches evolving
and spreading their “word.”
with shrines in the mountains
and mosques and cathedrals,
marking passage in frescoes
and icons and stone.
Opening doorways with painting and script.
with invasions, revolution –
the forces of change –
to leave us to stand
at the gateway of wonder
where our world and theirs
come together at last.