Athena - An Epic Dream I
By David Gosselin
Featured in our New Lyre Winter 2024 issue.
Canto I.
Zeus finds himself humiliated by one of his fellow immortals after they deceive him using mortal melodies. The god of gods has one of his usual rage fits, but with new and unintended consequences, the likes of which the gods have never quite known before.
He drank over the fissured skies of Earth,
He sipped from wine that sparkled like the stars.
Groaning within his ancient tropic courts,
Beneath the wide arcades of shining stars,
Zeus mused upon the fate of Earth’s frail forms
Whose fairest cities and holiest piles,
Whose wildest lands and sultry seas he smites
With howling gales of death-exacting force
And endless rains of unremitting might.
Yet men appeared content with earthly bread,
Their race had never tasted sweet ambrosia.
Zeus gazed upon the seasoned world below:
“What is so dear to man that won’t be lost
Upon the hoary seas of time; and who
Rejoices in the fate he cannot choose—
How queer and vile are Earth’s thinking things,
How hopeless even their starriest inklings,
How dour even their most daring dreams.
For, no man can escape gluttonous Time;
He hounds Earth’s sad race unrelentingly:
I hear the anthems of the swarthy shores,
The requiem of tides and writhing seas
Announcing what must be for every man.
For mortals—as for flies—life is but death,
Which raving Time usurps with every breath,
With each shadow of day and twinkle of night.”
And yet more mercy shone upon that orb
Than across Olympian sky and sea.
For, mortals knew the perils of the Earth,
The endless dangers of Olympian strife,
The greediness of unrelenting Time
Who steals men’s breath more quickly than our rhyme.
Surrounded by towering colonnades,
Beneath the naves of scintillating stars,
The gods devoured ambrosia for days
—The friends of neither satiety nor want—
Sweet pleasure always haunting their demesnes.
Pure streams of iridescent wines careened
From their colossal cups like sacred streams
That tumble from the crags of misty peaks.
Infinite lattice-work, facades and bold
Reliefs entwined across the endless halls
Where all Time’s secrets whispered on the walls
In cryptic fonts and prophetic motifs
Beyond the wildest dreams of mortal men.
Far-passed the cloudy fences in the sky
—Suspended out of time—it hung aloft:
The snowy realm of the Olympians,
From which they scoffed at mortal men, whose race
Should never hope to know immortal Beauty.
Yet on Sicilian shores in Syracuse,
There lived a bard and his beloved muse:
Lorenzo was the boy who spoke of all
That lovers feel, that is, those unafraid
Of Love’s quivering spears and golden darts.
And Bella was Lorenzo’s earthly muse
Who sang his songs as only she could know
How such ethereal melodies should sound.
Their love was like a song, not only theirs,
But one of nature’s own—her joyous sprite—
Like blackbirds warbling songs throughout the day,
Sharing their joy with all the lovelorn souls;
Or nightingales who tease the sable night
And lead our drifting thoughts beneath the moon’s
Pale light—Earth knew them as her very own.
They gazed, not into one another’s eyes,
But beyond those glittering gates, into
That sidereal realm where new-freed souls
Take flight after their mortal coil’s dissolved,
After the midnight’s frosty fingers seal
The many mysteries of Earth’s dark veil,
Until nothing remains save for the sound
Of spiritless winds haunting the creatured woods.
Before them lay something so dear, something
That only deathless deities should fear,
What those perennial forms had never known:
The briefness of a mortal life on Earth.
But on one quiet night, as gentle tides
Began returning to Hesperia’s shores,
The goddess of the hunt and shady springs
—Artemis—roamed about a woodland maze,
Tending upon her sacred oaks and streams.
The breezes blew across the rippling waves,
Stroking the gentle surface like the hand
Of a delicate maid playing her lyre;
Mount Etna lay like a slumbering child
As pallid moonlight trickled down her back
And softly flowed into mysterious dales.
The sweetened scent of her Sicilian groves
Wafted across the ocean’s briny waves,
Filling the air with that sweet-bitter taste
Which all have known who’ve watched the ebbing tide.
The lands resounded with Earth’s quiet songs,
But far beyond the charms of faerie isles,
And nymph and dryad-guarded isthmuses,
The hallowed huntress heard a gentle lay,
Which flowed not from the gently rustling whorls
Of Hesperia’s sacred wilderness,
Nor from the humming dreams of slumbering
Volcanoes singing from the Earth’s deep core,
But from the gentle throats of mortal men:
Lorenzo’s Song
But your love caught me by surprise,
Like arrows launched from Cupid’s bow
—Sent from his heavenly abode—
Now at your pinions, my heart lies.
We choose not Love, we choose not Death
—They come like falling stars in skies—
Yet lying there, within those eyes,
Is my first love and my first breath.
