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—53 Somewhere Off the Coast of Cyprus Gods don’t get what they want, they stumble, falter, and halt at the frontiers of fulfillment, puzzled that power isn’t always pleasure. They want to know what know is (I have known, I knew, I know, I will know, I will have known), instead learn only no. (Conjugate this, decline every noun.) No happy ending to this sentence for a god, sentenced to helpless potency, all will and self-belief but somehow substanceless, a notion of force that steals a form and calls it body, steals a body and calls it mine, impervious to touch. A litter of porous marble’s all that’s left, paint-stripped but still stained, nothing that anyone could use. How useless immortality becomes in time, rubble retrieved from a receding river in a year of drought. The goddess has no arms, the god’s hand drawing back the bow is missing, there’s no protection for them anymore. Acid rain worms through their statuary skin. Better to wait for the waters to return, the mildewed monuments to finish crumbling. Let the shipwrecked cargoes sleep where they sank (myths buried in them like birds that won’t be heard), gold leaf and lapis lazuli dreaming of love, whatever love means to a god. shepherd text-2.indd 53 11/22/10 2:07 PM ...

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