Two Scholars of Chinese Seventeenth Century K'ang-Hst K'oou Fragments Sat at an Al Fresco Cafe

TWO SCHOLARS OF CHINESE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
K’ANG-HST K’OOU FRAGMENTS SAT AT AN AL FRESCO CAFÉ


A prognosticator, sitting at a table
next to curled iron railing.
Predicated that the odds were 250 to 1
that all in this outdoor café
among the potted geraniums,
drinking wine and laughing
Would be blown apart before
the sleeping owls woke up.
She discussing the tortures
of the old sinners,
Tantalos, Tityous, and Sispyhus,
became perturbed,
said to her lover that they should
have gone to the art museum.
“The art museum was always a safe place.”
“No,” her lover said, “The art museum
was blown up last week.
Works of Soutine, Modigliani, Chagall,
and Dufy were destroyed.”
“Orphism, the Eleusinian mysteries
said a happier life would be found
in an afterlife when we are dead.
No one throws bombs in the Underworld.”
“But there is reincarnation,
and we have to return to this world.
I am going to study the Orphic writings,
for these writings give instructions what
the dead should say and do
to avoid reincarnation.”
“Let us both go to the Temple of Delphi
and seek Apollo’s answer.”
“Pythia is stern and arrogant,
speaks in riddles
like postmodern poets.
I wish we could stay here in the open air,
watch the sparrow peck in the dirt
around the sidewalk trees,
continuing our laughter,
drinking our wine, although this Shiraz
is not very good.”
No one had noticed that the dirt
around the date palm was loose.
Some one had buried a bomb.
At five o’clock, the bomb went off.


Duane Locke

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