The Night When a Carnival Was Two Blocks From My House

THE NIGHT WHEN A CARNIVAL WAS
TWO BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE

Tonight, I started recalling ancient history
when gods fed on their fathers
after eating their mothers.
Zeus was supposed to end this situation
that if you were divine
you would dine on your father.
Zeus substituted ambrosia.

These old gods had cobras crawling
on their foreheads,
but I cannot remember when the gods began
to look more like the human beings
that Prometheus is rumored to have created.

Being anti-industrial revolution,
I still use an hour glass
to tell the time,
but I noticed the sand has run out,
but I could check my sun-dial clock
out in the myrrh garden.

I do not need to know the time,
because I am not going to meet her,
or is she coming to see me.

I sit in this chair of one arm,
and smell the odors of the lotus
in the next room.

I recall, entranced by the lotus’s perfume,
Old poets who wrote pantoums,
her white-gold hair whose whispers
were silver,
an eagle eating Prometheus’ liver.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Plum Ruby Review