The Parthenon

Henry Sloss

Below the monastery the mundane
Enchantment of an elegant light lunch,
Reflected in a silver chocolate bowl,
Swallows the other-worldly whole.

Gone now a world of poverty and olives,
Where loneliness hits you like a low blow;
No wonder the despicable beau monde
Charms an ex-revolutionary hobo.

He minds his manners, quickens to the wit
Flashing, like sunlight through the scattered cloud
And frosted glass, around the candle-lit
Foyer, where politics is disallowed.

Next, the initiate attempts a flight
Of treacherous steps and finds himself above,
Seated with a priest of art and love
In a windowful of blinding light.

He hears the other, polished as enamel,
Array himself in unrevealing shifts;
And shaggy, heavy-lidded as a camel,
Takes a caliph's interest in such gifts.

A maid of Athens calls, Addio.
The bon-bon mots melt. Ivory turns to soap.
The conversation wanders in and out
Of silence, in and out of hope.

Returned then to the city-riddled plain,
He gazes off to where old pillars tell
Stories of heights closed now to Anyman,
Whose consolation must be unbelief.