Showing posts with label rain. flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rain. flowers. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2009

Homer and Summer

The summer is sultry and sticky. I am jobless and I am reading Homer. In a blaze of May heat corpses pile at the gates of Ilium. The Greeks slaughter by the day and feast by the night. Achilles broods alone.

Sometimes there is a shower of rain. Clouds flit past the sky, drench the earth. The red earth of this campus is redder for a while. Despite the heat flowers bloom. They do not last long. The trees had shed their leaves not long ago. The raiment of green is cladding them again. Sometimes I spot a ladybug on a leaf. When I see nothing I draw faces. But I always throw them in the waste basket.

The shields and curets of heroes shine. The gods watch from the heavens. Ilium has not fallen yet. The heroes slaughter on.

Sometimes I fight within me. Sometimes I reason to me. Winter, summer, spring follow each other. Life has been like this since it was born. I know that sometimes you must live in nothing. I watch the heroes battling. I know that I am not heroic. Sometimes I am just too afraid.

Strange birds perch on the tree outside my balcony. I do not know where they come from. I do not know if they really are. They talk to each other when they are. But they are quick to fly away. The Trojan battlefield is soaked in blood.

I have no shield and I have no curets. I know no bard will sing of me after I have fought and have become the earth. But often to fight is not a choice. It is a state.

Sometimes it rains and sometimes the sun shines. The earth emits the fragrance of rain. Life lives itself and is beautiful.