Not for Conquering to Crush and Make a Cruel Empire but for Unforgotten Beauty

“Hystaspes had a younger brother whose name was Zariadres:  and they were both men of great personal beauty” ~ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 919

So what if you exist in words alone

In some freak journal from the ancient past,

A pampered book that almost makes us groan

With pedantry gone mad, deep in the vast

Egyptian desert?  What if that is all

Remaining of a man two thousand years

Now lost except for those few lines, a crawl

Of syllables across a scroll?  Your fears—

Oblivion, blank annihilation,

An emptiness so full that you might not

Have ever been, an evaporation

So total that you might have been just naught—

Are dead, for still you are what most can’t be,

Embalmed with lovely masculinity.

by phillipw | Jul 12, 2020 | BE, IM, MA | 1 comment