Can you see the stone people rising

Behind us, can you feel their long shadows?

You have to know the myth of Deucalion to 

Understand how ghosts can cast a shadow. 

They stand solemn, they move slowly,

They do not speak, we have

No shared language, they would not 

Understand the rhythms

That stir my blood, my music 

Would make them shake their

Heads and suck their breath in,

In disapproval. I stop in my tracks, hair 

Standing on end, listening for footsteps. 

 

They say tigers with sabre teeth walked here,

And lions, we have bones to prove it.

They say Centaurs, Cyclops and Naiads

Are now immortal Shape Shifting shadows 

Which is why, we have not found their bones. 

I know the names of the lost rivers 

Of Athens: Kifissos, Ilissos, Eradinos.

Defeated and driven underground 

By the victors, the engineers and the developers.

Bone dry for most of the year, when it rains and rains they rise up,

They flood the basements where the poor people live

 And, in this case, die, with excrement.

 

They say a city without rivers has no clear path, no future.

And yet. This city, sacked many times

Looted and raped and burned to the ground,

Has stayed rooted in place. 

Again and again, the boys and men 

Killed, the women taken into 

Enemy beds,

Which is what sacked means,

But they never explained that in full at school,

like they don’t mention the dirty water in the news. 

Because whatever horror sings in the blood,

By general agreement, has to stay hidden .

 

Time after time   They 

Will send us to war and the less

We know, the better we’ll serve 

Their purpose, the more we’ll believe

That the ones who came back in one piece

Were the lucky ones and all is now well.