THE PLOTS

Swellfoot, who would not see, then saw too late
The foolish myths revealed as frightful truths,
Did blind himself at last and saw no more
His hands that killed his sire, magnetic sex
That had returned unerringly to room
And breed his brothers in his mother's womb.

And for Cassandra second sight palled too
As laughter daily froze to horror when
Her erstwhile scoffers saw, too late, how true
Her dreams had been; she wearied of her gift
And prayed to be delivered of the pain
Of warning Greeks and Trojans all in vain.

Orestes, pausing in his restless flight
From his own guilt of branding guilt with death,
Till death would daily ponder how he might
Have been less willing agent of Fate' wiles
By waiting till some fated accident
Had made him kill the Queen without intent.

All these, like curious kids, had picked Fate's clock
And bared the cogs of cause and of effect
But stopped its ticking in their lives, The shock,
Of timeless knowledge and of impotence
In time, revealed their futures and their pasts
But from all present left them now outcasts.

1941

Poetry