And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2013

Poseidon and Others

262 Poseidon and Others His spear is somewhere sunk in the Aegean. The upraised hand grips nothing. His body’s primed for hurling—Olympian legs astride, both shoulders squared, the bearded face straightforward, and the eyes aiming. Why quibble if antiquities are flawed—a nose chipped, a penis broken at its base, a finger gone, the arms of Aphrodite amputated just beneath the shoulders? Flawless, they would show us totally what David offers us in Florence to a fault. Even when complete the statues of the Greeks revealed the breasts of all the Caryatids unnippled and the eyes opaque. The wearing down of centuries would do the rest. Whipping without his whip in hand, the charioteer of Delphi rides the wind. The missing horse, the whip, the chariot itself have long since gone to ruin, 263 but the race that’s never won or lost has always just begun. ...