Daniel King
Narcissus
I cannot leave this lake and my reflection.
Surely I don’t deserve this
Simply for spurning Echo?
My tears, a line of tiny spheres, are like an ellipsis,
Pointing to my omissions;
Their ripples form the circles of a target
At which I never aimed.
Can you not intervene, O Hera?
You too are no close friend to Echo.
Or when I foolishly declined the binary
Did I, in doing so, scorn the Many?
Many indeed I have rejected,
And I am terrified by Aphrodite’s clandestine politics.
The pressure is already overwhelming,
Driving me perhaps to become another narcissus,
Another wild flower,
That will dehisce into its semes
To be annihilated,
Dispersed,
Under the awful force of Aphrodite,
Who, outside time, is watcher also of the modern.
Can any child of Cephissus the river-god
Survive in other mirrors?
The ripples are becoming crimson,
Destroying my reflection, scattering my very self …
But there is little blood in what appear to be my leaves:
It is the red of communism!
I am composing “The Garden of Eros” …
I am composing “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” …
The new Individualism, for whose service Socialism, whether it wills it or not, is working,
will be in perfect harmony …
I am contrite, O Aphrodite!
I shall return to Echo and her democratic breath!
The new Individualism is the new Hellenism!
Page(s) 141
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