Friday, July 24, 2015

Talk with Sympathy






We walk.  A long walk.  A slim talk.  Our bodies direct our words and our words distort our bodies.
You don’t know how to love unless you know how to mourn.
"But did the Ancient Greeks mourn before they loved or loved before they mourned?" Euphrosyne wonders.
"I didn’t think of the ruined Greeks; isn’t that funny?  I‘d have to make an exception for them."
"And so Clytemnestra mourned Agamemnon after she killed him," she adds.
"Yes.  And Medea?  She mourned the loss of Jason’s love before she mourned the slaughter of her beloved children!"

Another bright day of such discussion!
of mourning and loving,
of losing and lacking.
And so we depart
from our inherited enthusiasm.
We split our walk after
digesting the
disgust
with which these sort of
stories once
filled us
as children listening
to our Greek
ancestors
spit these
tragedies out.

As I sit on a park’s bench with my thighs apart and my elbows resting on my bent knees, Euphrosyne’s branched hair blowing away into distant trees, behind me I hear a retired voice slur:

"I lost my wife on a summer's day.  Now my winter days are more than those humid summer evenings of walking with her."
"But there will be some unexpected warm nights in the winter", I felt like saying, but didn’t.  
I thought. He’s mourning the loss of someone he loved!
"Did you mourn before your wife died?" I wanted to ask, but didn’t.
Instead, I look after Euphrosyne’s footprints in the park.          
Did I mistake Medusa for Eros?
All those times when her hair stroked me,
I was being kissed by snakes!
And each time my body had turned to stare at her,
vibrating,
it turned to stone.
  
Those sultry eyes,
waxing lyrical about
our Amazonian walk,
Love to stare back

when

summer sweat sticks to
supple skin,
smells of spiced orange
peel and dried clove.

 "Have I mourned her?"
 "Should I tell her that I loved her but never mourned her?"