ΗΦΑΙΣΤΕΙΟΝ

On the Hephestion of Athens

                                        for Bertolt Brecht

We built, as we were told, the Parthenon.
It sparkled bright, to all Athenians’ pride,
Athena clad in ivory and in gold.
We were to make the summit of the world,
and so we toiled with crane and chisel till
our work was through for that world to behold.

And then, in the Agoura, common place
where slave and serf and citizen all roamed
we raised our own Hephaestion—the shrine
made for our homely god, the one who fell,
the injured one who labored still to forge
the bolts of Zeus. The cuckold god, whose wife
found play with warriors better than her time
beside the lame one, rank with sweat and smoke
and calloused hands with burns in black and red.

And yet, a hundred generations lost,
it’s this one that remains most concinnite.
A ruin, yes, the paint we lavished gone,
but with a couple weeks we’d have it up
and roofed and ready for our priests to pray.

We are the kind of men who knew our god,
the one who kept us from the broken bones,
the amputations, poisons of the blood,
the suppurations, agues—He’d prefer
a place amid the stink of common folk
who’d pass before his portico and smile,
and then, he knew, would dawdle for a while.

Πρόκειται για ποίημα που ευρέθη εδώ. Πάντοτε μ' ενδιαφέρει που μπορεί να οδηγήσουν  αυτές οι πηγές έμπνευσης των ανθρώπων.