Esthetic Wistfulness as Obscenity
“The two greatest poems of western man are still, in many eyes, the two oldest. And the grace and sanity of Greece are not so common in the modern world that we can afford to forget them.” ~ F. L. Lucas in Greek Poetry
Does ancient Greece’s sanity and grace
Include the rape of boys and women by
Great Zeus? Does it include the savage face
That makes the cradled son of Hector cry
By casting him to death from Troy’s wall?
Does taking slaves by scores and hundreds to
Be forced to work in mines, and women crawl
In sex submission to the men who slew
Their husbands, sons, and fathers seem so sane
That we should feel nostalgia for this past?
And what about the prophetess’s pain
When speaking truth makes others feel aghast?
..A father kills his daughter for the pyre.
….Then wife kills him. This ancient Greece was dire.