Poem by MG King /
He learned to brush away archaic want,
To give it to the pile from some scabbard,
To light ablaze, to send it up to heaven.
No poets’ tongues have we to write on such:
No Teucrians travelling, no names to sing
Or liken to an oath. But we have known
The ghost and blade, the falling citadel,
And this means more than some blasphemer's blood,
Worth more than chattering bones and games, worth more
Than unions in Carthagian caves, and so
We take up arms and throw them down; we throw
Them, singing songs of burning memory.
We are not in Carthage, and this
Is not a cave. This is not a
Marriage vowed, nor refuge taken.
These are stories spread before us;
With a storming all begin:
Something fearsome, buried under
Sands unaltered. Teeth and tables,
Sinking tables, breathing heavy
While there near us something burns.
Thoughts come more like a legionnaire’s: he is
Commanded, struck down to the floor while hands
Hold fast his dampened hair and force his eyes
Towards the coming dawn we shall not see.
They now into his shoulder deeply bite–
He could be like the son of Tantalos,
That iv’ry-armed young Pelops in his stew–
But this is not a poem; these mouths are not
Of gods. Sharp virtue tears into his back:
That place between the scapulae, where want
And need begin to blur before erased
With iron of more prudent minds.
Something’s fearsome under this earth,
Catastrophic pagan songwrights,
Some old perfect periphrastic
That we still can’t seem to hold.
“Think not that this in front of you is my
Attempt at poem or prayer,” he shouts against
Divine-wrought wind; he knows not of the pen
But thinks it still the lesser of the sword,
For bloodshed is the anthem of desire,
And dying is love’s impetus. Why else
Do shadows come to us in dreams? Why else
Are empires born with iron founded through
Some lover’s chest? We do not want to bleed
And yet it festers deep within; he hears
It rising: something supperating now?
The loudest aches are ones that break the skin
And grow when brightest stars below the waves
Are sunk. Are not we meant to hear them, now?
MG King is a first-year on Colgate Swim & Dive who plans on majoring in Classics and English. His free time, unsurprisingly, is spent thinking about maritime disasters, appreciating the works of William Shakespeare, and arguing with strangers on the internet about Roman history.
