This was written in response to a contest held at allpoetry.com. We were given a list of quotes to choose from and write about. My quote was " Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. " George Orwell.

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The goddess rises from the sea,
long, pale hair falling around her,
the tips entwining - o! loving! - the aphros.
Her naked form entrances him, as she
offers him his choice: weighty book in her left,
bejeweled goblet of heady wine in her right.

"My son, I have a gift for you. You may choose
only one, so be wise..." Palest eyes take grasp
his own, angelic voices flowing o'er the waves.

Dizzy, light-headed, he contemplates his
brides to be. A lifetime of knowledge, or
of love, passion, desire? An important
decision, to be sure, for this goddess
marries for eternity, and one must bear
the consequences of ones actions, be they
beautiful or be they rotten.

Desire he'd had, passion he'd experienced.
Nothing sweeter than bedding a woman, tangled
in a stranger's sheets, then slipping away
before dawn, for she'd never love him in the
light of day. Love. Love... he pondered.

"I've made my choice," says he, "and it's
the weighty book I'll have. For love doth
birth from wisdom's womb, with heady wine
its own."

Critiques always welcome.

Lady of the Night

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2021 05:34PM by Lady of the Evening.

What is the weighty book?

My mistake, I apologize. This was written in response to a contest held on allpoetry.com and we were given a list of quotes to choose from and write about. The quote that inspired this is "Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. " George Orwell.

So the weighty book represents knowledge, wisdom or understanding.

Hope that clarifies and thank you for reading.

Critiques always welcome.

Lady of the Night

it ain't no easy trick extending the existing mythology with a piece meant to extend the stylistics of the translation of Greek sensitivity into understandable English. You done ok with this.

amo,

Peter

Whaaaaaaaaaat? I'm sorry, I read that sentence about 6 times and I'm not understanding what you said. Neither does my roommate. Help?

Critiques always welcome.

Lady of the Night

'Night,

I knew that comment would be almost incomprehensible. I just like it when poets use the mythopoetic tradition, since it is one of the function of poetry...to keep the tradition alive. I wasn't saying anything more profound than that.

cheers,

Peter

Peter,

I understand now. The part that was stumping me was "stylistics of translating Greek sensitivity understandable English."

In any case, I'm glad you enjoyed it

So then, did poetry have its history in mythology?

Lady of the Night

Well, it was probably more complex than that. The Greeks talk about the mind that preceded what would become the philosophic/scientific mind. Those with the later way of thinking included such thinkers as Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Pythagoras; Heraclitus, Parmenedes, Zeno; Empedocles, Anaxagoras; Protagoras...all the way back to the father of philosophy Thales. We have them to thank for Plato and Aristotle all the way up into the modern World.

But before this way of thinking, the Greeks had Hesiod and the voice of Homer. The word for the earlier way of thinking was mythopoetic thought. Myth and poetry as a way of conceiving the world in which humans appeared to find themselves. This back 100,000 years to the replacement of the earlier species of humans by a single subspecies of a single species of a since race: homo sapiens sapiens...or so the anthropological tale goes. The ancient texts of most of the cultures of the world were mythologies which peopled a living world with living beings proir to what we accept, and that mythology was usually written in the poetry of that language.

amo and avanti,

Peter

Well, that's one version of it anyway. It certainly takes the role of the poet seriously, doesn't it?

It does. It's a humbling and sobering thought. Thanks for the enlightenment

Lady of the Night